France Telecom conditional access subsidiary Viaccess says that it has landed the content protection and rights management contract which will take Russia’s NTV-Plus into the IPTV market.
NTV-PLUS was the first satellite TV provider in Russia and the Ukraine and has been delivering service there for 15 years using two Eutelsat satellites, and has 2 million customers.
NTV-PLUS has been a long term Viaccess user on the satellite side and this deal is really just extending it to IPTV using virtually the same set up. The idea is to cut deals with local ISPs, deliver over the ISP network through a local downlink and provide the decryption cards directly to their consumers
‘NTV-PLUS is providing the premium content in Russia, so it must have an efficient solution with high level of content protection,’ said Fran’ois Moreau de Saint-Martin, Viaccess CEO. ‘Crackers and hackers are very active in the country. Viaccess technology will support NTV-PLUS and its ISP partners with the state of the art technology to address this threat, while allowing them to offer IPTV at marginal costs and putting a foot into the hybrid (satellite and IP) services.’
Viaccess and its subsidiary middleware company Orca will be showing off its combined service for IPTV, Hybrid TV and OTT Deployments at the IPTV World Forum in London next week and has already had some success in France offering IPTV services using the Orca OTT delivery, outside what is normally the IPTV DSL reach.