Products / Services

Integra Telecom to Launch IPTV Service in Early 2010

TelcoTV 09, Orlando, Fla, November 11, 2009 - Avail-TVN, the largest independent digital media services company in North America, today announced its 100th IPTV customer. Integra Telecom joins service providers across North America, including 38 former IP-Prime affiliates, in partnering with Avail-TVN to deliver linear IPTV services to their subscribers. Integra’s digital television services will initially be limited to its incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC) business, which services over 14,000 primarily residential customers in select areas of the suburban Minneapolis/St. Paul metropolitan area. Avail-TVN will work with its integration partner, Dascom, to plan and execute Integra’s video services launch, scheduled for the first quarter of 2010.

“Avail-TVN and Dascom are making it easy for us to bring digital video services to market quickly,” said Dave Kunde, senior vice president and general manager at Integra Telecom. “Their integrated approach and future-looking service roadmap were key factors for us in our search for partners who could help us provide this key revenue-generating service.”

As part of a company focus on IPTV deployments, Avail-TVN transitioned more than 75 percent of the former SES Americom IP-Prime customer base to the Avail-TVN platform over the last year. Integra Telecom joins these former IP-Prime customers, and other innovative telecom providers who are working with Avail-TVN to drive IPTV deployments across North America.

“2009 has been an exciting year for the IPTV market, which is reaching critical mass in terms of real deployments,” said Ramu Potarazu, CEO of Avail-TVN. “Consumer appetite for TV everywhere, at anytime, is driving service provider need for sophisticated digital media solutions that take care of the heavy lifting, allowing carriers to do what they do best – service the customer. We’re pleased to be adding Integra Telecom to our list of IPTV affiliates and look forward to taking them live in early 2010.”

Potarazu discussed the role of IPTV in the future of digital media services during a keynote address at TelcoTV this morning, entitled, “The Future of Digital Media Services: Don’t let it pass you by.”

Avail-TVN provides programming from more than 200 content owners to over 250 cable, satellite, FTTH and telecom service providers and is the only company today to deliver a complete suite of video services for the IPTV market that includes MPEG-4 linear IPTV and Video On Demand (VOD). The Avail-TVN solution includes a full line-up of live television programming with hundreds of channels, combined with thousands of hours VOD content including movies from every major studio, cable and broadcast networks, premium cable networks and adult content.

Avail-TVN partners with best-in-class members of the IPTV ecosystem including equipment providers, resellers, and content owners in order to deliver value to its customers. The company’s partners include sales channel partners, resellers, and systems integrators such as Dascom, Cisco, BBT, CSI Digital, Evolution Broadband, Falcon IP/Complete, Fidelity Communications, Motorola, and Nortel; and business consulting groups, such as Jason Anderson Consulting. The company works with its ecosystem partners to develop customized solutions, ensuring minimal infrastructure changes and reasonable fees to support both existing and future affiliates.

Avail-TVN is the largest independent digital media services company in North America. Working with every major studio and television network, the company offers a full content line up of MPEG-4 encoded live programming as well as video on demand content in MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 to multichannel video providers throughout the US, Canada, the Caribbean and Mexico. The Avail-TVN platform is an open, advanced technology, offering the most comprehensive, end-to-end solution for licensing, managing, distributing and marketing linear and on-demand content to virtually any platform today and is extensible to support the new services of tomorrow. For more information please visit avail-tvn.com.

Integra Telecom, Inc. provides voice, data and Internet communications to thousands of business and carrier customers in eight Western states, including: Arizona, California, Idaho, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oregon, Utah and Washington. The company owns and operates a best-in-class fiber-optic network comprised of eight metropolitan access networks, a nationally acclaimed Internet and data network and a 4,700-mile high-speed long haul network. The company enjoys some of the highest customer loyalty and customer satisfaction ratings in the telecommunications industry. For more information, visit www.integratelecom.com.