Motorola Buys IPTV Set-top Maker

Alan Breznick, Cable/Video Practice Leader, Light Reading

January 18, 2006

1 Min Read
Motorola Buys IPTV Set-top Maker

Motorola has a good idea where its bread will be buttered in the future. In what looks like a savvy move, the cable set-top box king is buying Kreatel Communications, a Swedish maker of IPTV set-top boxes for phone companies, as it seeks to expand its reach beyond cable. Motorola announced the purchase earlier today. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. But it makes great sense on the surface for Motorola, which is now developing digital set-tops based on IPTV technology for both Verizon Communications and AT&T Inc. In Kreatel, Motorola will get a company that already supplies IPTV set-tops for such big European telecom companies as Spain's Telefonica, Sweden's TeliaSonera and the Netherlands' KPN. Kreatel relies on a Linux-based solution to offer IPTV middleware and applications. Not surprisingly, Motorola termed the deal "a natural complement" to its end-to-end digital technology and said the agreement "particularly addresses the growing need for IPTV-based digital set-tops."

About the Author(s)

Alan Breznick

Cable/Video Practice Leader, Light Reading

Alan Breznick is a business editor and research analyst who has tracked the cable, broadband and video markets like an over-bred bloodhound for more than 20 years.

As a senior analyst at Light Reading's research arm, Heavy Reading, for six years, Alan authored numerous reports, columns, white papers and case studies, moderated dozens of webinars, and organized and hosted more than 15 -- count 'em --regional conferences on cable, broadband and IPTV technology topics. And all this while maintaining a summer job as an ostrich wrangler.

Before that, he was the founding editor of Light Reading Cable, transforming a monthly newsletter into a daily website. Prior to joining Light Reading, Alan was a broadband analyst for Kinetic Strategies and a contributing analyst for One Touch Intelligence.

He is based in the Toronto area, though is New York born and bred. Just ask, and he will take you on a power-walking tour of Manhattan, pointing out the tourist hotspots and the places that make up his personal timeline: The bench where he smoked his first pipe; the alley where he won his first fist fight. That kind of thing.

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