Twin Lakes Telephone has selected Entone's FusionTV solution as it moves to offer its customers hybrid TV.
The deal will give the Tennessee co-op, with its headquarters between Nashville and Knoxville in Gainesboro, the ability to deliver live HDTV, a digital video recorder and cloud services through a single TV user interface.
Twin Lakes subscribers, after a software update, will be able to access Vudu's streaming library, as well as more than 50 cloud-based services like photo sharing from Flickr and Picasa and social media via Facebook and Twitter.
The service upgrade can be done without a truck roll.
Twin Lakes' service is copper based and numbers 30,000 residential and business co-op members. In addition to phone and TV plans, it also offers Internet connections with a maximum download speed of 12 Mb/s.
"Our customers rely on us to provide them with personalized and reliable telecommunication services," Jonathan West, GM and CEO of TLTC, said. West said the Entone Fusion solution allowed the telco to leverage its existing network to offer HDTV and over-the-top services without incurring large opex and capex costs often associated with traditional pay-TV service.
And, he said, offering OTT allowed the company to both monetize TLTC's broadband network and "strengthen our relationship with our customers."
The Entone system is a turn-key managed service platform. It allows operators to deliver an operator-branded service that combines traditional pay-TV with OTT components.
Entone said the platform can help operators give customers the video and OTT content they want and also increase ARPU.
"Broadband is becoming the anchor for residential triple-play services and [it] is increasingly clear that whoever owns that relationship has the greatest opportunity to increase the value of their network," said Vince Vittore, senior analyst at Yankee Group. "By leveraging OTT and cloud service innovations using platforms like FusionTV, operators can offer a differentiated video service that drives subscriber growth and increases ARPU."
Entone has deployed its products with more than 100 operators globally, most recently teaming with Swedish operator Sunrise on an IPTV play, and with Texas co-op VTCI on a hybrid deployment with Fusion.
For more:
- see this release
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