UTStarcom, Myrio Have Their IPTV

News Analysis Light Reading 11/17/2004

Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) may have stolen the thunder in the IPTV sector today, but it isn't the only one with something to crow about in the rapidly expanding sector (see SBC Awards Microsoft $400M IPTV Deal ).

So here's a roundup of the other key news in the telecom TV and video delivery world:

UTStarcom Inc. (Nasdaq: UTSI) today announced the first customer for its mVision IPTV platform, which it officially unveiled in October (see UTStarcom Wins IP TV Deal and UTStarcom Launches IP TV System).

Until now, the vendor has only had trials with four as yet unidentified Asian carriers to talk about. Now it has an actual customer, CLEC SmartTel Communications, which will provide triple-play services over fiber to residential customers in Florida and Alabama.

UTStarcom's VP of strategic marketing, Jeff Paine, says the vendor has been working on mVision for years and has a number of patents. Paine is convinced that the only way to succeed in the IPTV sector is to "own or have significant influence over all the elements," handling the video and TV content, from the encoding to the customer.

To that end, Paine says his company has developed an entire end-to-end system. Its only partner is Harmonic Inc. (Nasdaq: HLIT) for its heavy-duty encoder.

"The piecemeal approach is a non-starter," says Paine, "especially from an OSS perspective."

Despite this, he reckons Siemens Communications Group has pulled together a good system with partners such as Myrio Corp., and that Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. is a company to watch in this space (see Siemens Gears Up for IPTV).

Speaking of Myrio, today it announced a new customer, a new program partner, and a new version of its IPTV platform (see Myrio Lands Another Deal , ICTV Joins Myrio Program, and Myrio Upgrades Its IP TV ).

Myrio's VP of marketing, Roger Shanafelt, says the product update adds international languages as standard, an open API for linking to content security and digital rights management (DRM) systems, and a personal video recorder (PVR) module that service providers can download to set-top boxes that have hard drives.

He says the upturn in business this year has seen Myrio grow to more than 60 in staff, and that the vendor still has 15 positions to fill, mostly for developers. He adds the vendor has been engaged in RFPs with BellSouth Corp. (NYSE: BLS) and SBC Communications Inc. (NYSE: SBC) through its relationship with Siemens, but that Myrio is looking to strike other major partnerships to expand its contract-winning potential.

Other headlines of note from the past few days:

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— Ray Le Maistre, International News Editor, Light Reading

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