Narrowstep, calling itself “the TV on the Internet company,” has landed a deal with Spain’s Telefonica, the world’s third-largest cellco. Telefonica will use UK start up, Narrowstep’s telvOS technology to deliver TV over broadband.
Telefonica has been beta testing two broadband TV channels, Terra TV Spain (www.terra.es) and Terra TV Peru (www.terra.com.pw), and says that early results indicate the broadband channels have been experiencing “massive” success.
The broadband TV offerings are the fastest growing features on the portals, according to Telefonica, which says Terra TV Spain attracted more than 300,000 unique viewers in March and has click-through rates consistently measuring higher than any other offering on the portal.
Terra TV Peru is also attracting thousands of unique viewers and is converting 10% of its portal visitors to TV viewers.
Terra is the Internet arm of Telefonica and operates some of the most popular Web sites in the US, Spain and Latin America, all targeting Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking customers. Terra TV content categories include entertainment, music, local and worldwide news, business and health.
Terra attributes its success to not only great content, but to the technology used to deliver it.
It said it selected Narrowstep for its broadband video efforts because of Narrowstep’s expertise and experience in the TV over IP sector. A Terra spokesman said, “Narrowstep is one of the few companies worldwide who truly understands content delivery on broadband and its technology is second to none. Content is always key, but not much use if it isn’t delivered effectively.”
David McCourt, chairman and CEO of Narrowstep, said, “Telefonica’s success in this medium validates our long-term vision for how entertainment will be delivered to consumers.”
Narrowstep’s telvOS system is used to provide the backbone for TV over IP for more than 150 channels worldwide including Cycling.tv, Martial Arts TV and GolfBug.tv. Its customers offer a range of content from pop culture entertainment, tourism and sports to local broadcasts – and allows them to expand their market, monetize their content and build their community by removing the geographical boundaries to traditional broadcasting.
ITV, the UK’s largest independent TV company, recently selected Narrowstep technology to build an online TV service after a yearlong trial.
Firecracker Media selected Narrowstep technology for IP-delivered video technology for its broadband channel Firecrackertv.com, which features streaming on-demand movies from Asia covering an array of genres.