Orca Interactive's IPTV middleware – RiGHTv has been deployed for the first IPTV service in Portugal by Clix, the mass market brand of Sonaecom, a major telecommunications provider.
Clix SmarTV will offer live broadcast television and radio channels, an electronic programming guide (EPG), video on demand (VOD) and subscription video on demand (SVOD). The service has been successfully deployed in the cities of Lisbon and Porto. All major cities in Portugal will be covered in the full commercial deployment that is expected to reach a large subscriber base in 2007.
Sonaecom is using Orca's RiGHTv release 4.5 that includes such benefits as:
- Accelerating the time to market of new IPTV applications and services by using Orca's IPTV Service Delivery Platform (SDP)
- Enabling rapid User Interface modifications and STB porting via the RiGHTv Subscriber User Interface Software Development Kit (SUI SDK)
- Complete integration into the operator's OSS / BSS environment using standards-based APIs
- Robust integration with Video server and CA / DRM
- A rich interactive TV application suite
To provide Sonaecom with a solution at a short time to market, RiGHTv plug-in architecture allowed rapid integration and central management of value chain components. The solution value chain includes Amino and Kreatel/Motorola set-top boxes, Tandberg's SkyStream encoders, Kasenna video server, and Widevine content protection over the network architecture of Huawei.
"Orca's flexible middleware allowed us to develop our own user interface that fits the Portuguese market, and promotes and differentiates our brand," said Susanna Barbato, Managing Director of IPTV services at Sonaecom. "Due to its openness we were able to preview a number of value chain components during trials to achieve a best of breed solution."
"Sonaecom wants service flexibility and independence, this was a major factor in their choice of Orca," said Haggai Barel, CEO, Orca Interactive. "RiGHTv's SUI SDK has given Sonaecom the ability to develop their own SUI on various STBs, the middleware's APIs allowed them to conduct the CRM and billing integration, and they were able to independently install the solution on their preferred hardware platforms that were not certified by Orca prior to the project. Sonaecom also upgraded to the latest RiGHTv version on their own."