The dismantling of the Nortel legend will take some time, but in IPTV, Nortel was one of those telecommunications suppliers that just didn’t have a clue. It based its strategy around ‘partnering’ with software and device suppliers so that at least it could get some of the IPTV implementation projects around the world. Being almost last to move, and the supplier which put in the least effort, it managed to attract very few customers. Telus in its native Canada was one such customer, a tier 2 telco which in 2006, when the Microsoft Mediaroom software was nowhere near mature enough, became a cause c’l’bre of the common or garden variety of IPTV suppliers, simply because it rejected Microsoft.
This week it completed an about turn, switching on a Microsoft Mediaroom implementation of IPTV in a number of markets in Western Canada.
Nortel had even managed to pick up the reins from an even earlier implementation of IPTV technology, when Telus had started IPTV life with Alcatel’s OMP middleware. Obviously it kept its connections at Telus throughout the next four years and was ready to step in and push Mediaroom as the third Telus IPTV implementation.
But back in 2006 it was the one big one that escaped the Microsoft Alcatel partnership which had been dominating tier one telcos.
The failure of Nortel may have had as much to do with the desertion back to Mediaroom, as the differences in IPTV system capability. The older (second) system had was built around Minerva middleware, Widevine DRM, used old existing VoD servers that were built around a defunct Oracle offering, and left its encoders in place. Set tops came from Thomson and, we think, Cisco’s Scientific Atlanta.
Nortel got to sell a few switches and upgrades to the Telus IP network, but the access network was always built around Alcatel DSLAMS and ISAMs. The Telus team said at the time that the Mediaroom system was not ready and that it was imperative that its environment remained open and standards-based, which off course did it very little good and which it is no longer.
Up until and including that contract Minerva had won many of the important IPTV middleware business across the US at smaller telcos, in much the same way that the earlier Myrio had. Now Mediaroom is slowly mopping them up, working from top down, larger customers first.
Microsoft says that the service was launched in Edmonton, Alberta and British Columbia and has added features such as PVR Anywhere, which lets users watch shows on any other connected TV in the house; record up to three shows simultaneously from any room with up to 115 hours of HD or 295 hours of SD content and surf channels faster, with the Mediaroom Instant Channel Change.
‘We’re excited that Telus has chosen Microsoft Mediaroom as the platform for their next generation Telus TV service,’ said Andreas Mueller-Schubert, general manager of the TV and Video Platforms Business at Microsoft Corp. ‘With this new service, Telus is poised to deliver dramatic enhancements to the TV viewing experience, making it easy for their customers to discover and enjoy more movies or TV shows they will love, when and where they want to watch.’
Minerva attached customers will be slowly rotated onto the new system.
In July last year IPTV pioneer SureWest caved in and moved to Mediaroom. It was supplied previously by Irdeto for conditional access, Minerva for middleware, Kasenna for VoD and with Amino set tops, but then introduced a Mediaroom system for customers it is connecting via fiber.