Concurrent announces the first commercial deployment of video-on-demand in Central America. Cable Onda, the leading cable service provider in Panama, has chosen Concurrent’s MediaHawk 4000 on-demand platform to support the launch of VOD to approximately 15,000 digital cable subscribers in a centralized architecture. This is the first on-demand launch in both Panama and Central America, as well as the first Latin American launch for Concurrent’s Real-Time Media product.
“Panama has long been considered the ‘gateway’ to Latin America,” stated Gary Trimm, president and CEO of Concurrent. “There are over 15 million cable households in Latin America, with 1.2 million in Central America and the Caribbean. The Cable Onda launch represents Concurrent’s continued success in this lucrative cable market.”
“Concurrent was chosen because of their reliable, widely-deployed technology and their reputation for solid customer support,” stated Karlos Brown, senior manager of operations, Cable Onda. “The modularity of their on-demand solution also allows us to easily and independently scale content storage and streaming capability as our needs for both grow.”
Cable Onda also launched Concurrent’s Real-Time Media, enabling the system to provide subscribers on-demand access to real-time content, such as news, sports, select broadcast television series and original programming from Cable Onda. As an optional component to the Media-Hawk On-Demand Platform, Real-Time Media allows viewers to pause, fast forward and rewind broadcast programs shortly after they have aired, while providing cable operators with a manageable and cost-effective revenue generator.
Concurrent’s MediaHawk 4000 series VOD platform provides unequalled system stability and uptime. The first and most widely deployed VOD solution to utilize commercial off-the-shelf hardware, the