UTStarcom has been selected as the only technology supplier for the first Mobile Television system across Hainan province, driven by China Telecom's Hainan branch. This is the first large-scale Mobile TV system in China to adopt UTStarcom's end-to-end RollingStream platform. The deployment is scheduled to go live on May 17, 2009, as an extension of the existing IPTV service that Hainan Telecom and UTStarcom have been delivering since 2006.
The system will support unicast, wireless application protocol and two modes of access through the mobile phone WAP browser and mobile phone end-user applications. Rich media services will enable all live television broadcast channels to be accessed via time-shift capabilities for up to 72 hours after the original airing. The system also will support online viewing and download, on-demand video and music, billboards, search capabilities and video blogs.
UTStarcom will continue to provide Hainan Telecom with full-system engineering for both the IPTV and Mobile TV services to ensure a consistent user experience across all video channels and to maximize video quality in accordance with current bandwidth capabilities. The highly-scalable Mobile TV solution encompasses professional code conversion tools, a sophisticated operation support system and an advanced content storage and distribution platform.
At the end of 2008, UTStarcom's RollingStream end-to-end IPTV system supported more than 1.27 million live IPTV subscribers globally. UTStarcom has announced IPTV deployments in India with Bharti Airtel, BSNL/Aksh, MTNL/Aksh and United Telecoms Limited, in Sri Lanka with SLT, in Japan with Softbank, in Latin America with Brasil Telecom and in Taiwan with Markwell.