Pioneer Picks Entone for IPTV, VOD

SAN MATEO, Calif. -- Entone Technologies, a leading provider of personal video content delivery solutions, announced today that Pioneer Long Distance (PLD), a subsidiary of Pioneer Telephone Cooperative, Inc., has selected Entone’s carrier-class video on demand (VOD) and content ingest workflow solutions to support its IP television (IPTV) service launch. PTC’s IPTV rollout covers its entire network of 72 exchanges across the state of Oklahoma, providing up to 33,000 homes with IPTV and VOD services.

To facilitate its ambitious launch, PTC has selected Entone’s full suite of VOD solutions for creating, managing, and delivering digital assets. These solutions include:

PTC, the third largest telephone cooperative, is upgrading its entire eight-region network with high-speed ADSL2+ and IPTV services. When complete, it will deliver up to 166 channels of streaming broadcast video and use ADSL2+ to support the viewing of as many as three different TV channels simultaneously per home. PTC IPTV service subscribers can choose from a number of bundled packages that include high-speed Internet access, voice services, and special features, such as On-screen Caller ID.

PTC executives said they chose Entone’s products and solutions due to their market leadership position, reliability, strong customer references, and best fit for the needs of PTC’s distributed IP network architecture.

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LONDON -- Entone Technologies, a leading provider of personal video content delivery solutions, is set to take part in two European industry events in May that will provide an extension of company’s rapidly growing presence in the European video-on-demand (VOD) and home networking markets.

Entone’s mini-European Spring tour will kick off in London on Wednesday, 11th of May when CEO Steve McKay will deliver a keynote address at the Mediacast Convergence Hub Conference (May 10-12th, Olympia, London, www.mediacast.net ) at 10.45hrs. Steve’s keynote, entitled “Successful Business Models for Delivering Effective Personal TV” will explore successful service models around the world for launching personal television services such as VOD, PVR, and nPVR, and how these services increasingly need to support networked homes and mobile consumers.

Simultaneously in Amsterdam, Entone is exhibiting and presenting at the Telecom Video Europe conference (May 11-12th, Krasnapolsky Hotel, Amsterdam, www.shorecliffcommunications.com). On Thursday, 12th of May at 16.00hrs, Steve McKay will take part in a Home Networking panel at the conference. Steve will examine two over-riding trends that are driving revolutionary change in home entertainment: on-demand television and home networking. He will look at what happens when these two trends collide and the implications for both video service operators and technology enablers.

At the same conference, in booth #22, Entone will demonstrate an end-to-end IPTV system featuring its StreamLiner network video recorder (NVR), the industry’s most scalable VOD architecture based on open hardware, and its Hydra IP video gateway. The Hydra IP video gateway supports up to three (3) simultaneous video streams from a single CPE device and uses a home’s existing coax cabling for in-home video distribution. This approach can reduce the per-home CPE costs by up to 70%.

“Entone’s business activities in Europe are off to a great start in 2005, with several significant deployments already this year,” says Steve McKay, CEO of Entone Technologies. “Our StreamLiner VOD platform has been deployed with dozens of operators around the world in the last year alone, and we are excited to show our Hydra IP video gateway for the first time in Europe at the Telecom Video Europe conference.”

Entone Technologies Inc.