UPC Checks Out Espial

DALLAS -- Espial® IPTV, the leading provider of IPTV middleware and applications, today announced the successful completion of an IPTV pilot deployment at UPC Sweden. UPC and its partners integrated and deployed Espial’s Evo® IPTV Service Platform, including the newly launched Evo® Server, in less than four months from project initiation to commercial launch. UPC Sweden was recently integrated into Com Hem, the leading Swedish provider of Triple Play services with 1.7 million customers covering all of Sweden.

UPC selected Espial’s Evo Server, which was commercially launched at TelcoTV in Dallas this week, and Espial’s market-leading Evo Client, recently named the #1 IPTV client middleware by market research firm ABI. UPC’s DSL-based IPTV deployment was designed to ensure a similar user experience to cable TV. In addition to Espial’s Evo Client and Evo Server products, UPC and its partners used the open and modular toolkits of the Evo Future-Proof FrameworkTM (FPF) to significantly reduce the cost, complexity, and time of the deployment. Other ecosystem partners include set-top boxes from Tilgin, encoders from Tandberg, VOD servers from Kasenna, and a proprietary DRM system. System integration with ecosystem components and back-office billing and OSS was completed by local Swedish integrator Kentor in less than four months. UPC used the Service Creation Environment of the Evo FPF to create user-interface “SkinTonesTM” customized and localized to Swedish look and feel, language, and programming data.

“We were amazed by the fast performance and overall quality of experience of the Evo IPTV platform compared to the other middleware solutions we evaluated,” said Ulf Johansson, former CEO of UPC Sweden, today vice President of Com Hem. “Further, we were very impressed by the flexibility of Espial’s Service Creation Environment which allowed us to mimic our cable TV service.”

Espial Group Inc.