IPTV service provider NeuLion and the International Fight League (IFL) announce a new partnership to deliver The IFL Network to fans worldwide.

The International Fight League is one of the world’s premier Mixed Martial Arts fighting organizations, currently in its second year of operation.

The new IFL Network brings fans closer to the action and is the next best thing to being ringside. The IFL Network is free to viewers and has already attracted many top advertisers. Through its iPTV service, NeuLion will also provide the IFL with complete billing services to support pay-per-view, registration, and future subscriptions. The IFL will be able to offer live events and video on demand showing the preparation fighters endure before going inside the ring.

Sun Direct TV has deployed Harmonic’s market-leading digital video solutions for India’s first MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) direct-to-home broadcast service. Harmonic has enabled Sun Direct TV to quickly offer its new DTH service to 40 million homes in southern India by providing a rapidly deployable, end-to-end solution encompassing the latest generation DiviCom Electra encoders, DiviTrackIP statistical multiplexing, the ProStream 8000 digital mosaic solution and NMX Digital Service Manager. Sun Direct TV’s new service was launched in early 2008 with 120 SD channels, and the operator plans to add HD video in the near future.

Ixia launches IxRave a patent-pending end-to-end remote Quality of Experience and service validation platform. IxiRave enables carriers, service providers and enterprises to actively isolate faults, verify that end-customers are receiving services and that such services are working according to SLAs, and then continue to remotely monitor their networks. Bell Canada worked with Ixia to deploy remote testing capability for rolling out triple play services on its network and achieved payback in just one year. Ixia will demonstrate its new end-to-end remote quality of experience and service validation platform on stand number 144 at IPTV World Forum in London, March 12-14.

NEC will launch full-scale IPTV business with high-profile NGN carrier applications. Providing End-to-End IPTV solutions and video delivery systems to communication carriers, NEC will expand this business to the international market. The company will draw on its NGN know-how and extensive experience with broadcasting technology to deliver highly competitive solutions predicted to generate 50 billion yen in sales by 2010.

NEC intends to adopt the following initiatives to accompany full-scale introduction of the new services.

Valtech has chosen Ericsson's IPTV solution. Using Ericsson's IPTV technology, Valtech will be able to provide new and value-added television services to its customers. The Ericsson solution consists of next-generation broadband access, multi-service edge routers, world-leading video compression, IPTV middleware, and content distribution platforms. The next-generation broadband infrastructure makes it much easier to combine data, voice and video services.

The solution will enable Valtech to offer a wide range of standard, high-definition broadcast channels and interactive services. Ericsson's IPTV solution will bring personalized and interactive multimedia services that are beyond today's broadcast-TV experience.

ROO has formed a tripartite business alliance with Abacast and Pando Networks to offer P2P streaming solutions to its current and future customers. The alliance will provide live streaming and VoD through the ROO Media Player. By combining forces with Abacast and Pando, ROO will be able to offer these P2P products as white-label solutions to its global network of customers increasing streaming quality while reducing associated bandwidth costs.

As part of the agreement, ROO has exclusive access to the technology of Abacast and Pando vis-a-vis certain of its direct competitors. The companies will work with ROO to integrate their respective technologies into the ROO Media Player environment to facilitate a seamless end-user experience offering both solutions through the single ROO client application.

Garland Partners, Remote Media and Teracue are pleased to announce their collaboration in bringing together complimentary technologies to enhance the Digital Signage experience!

Using the award-winning “signagelive” platform from Remote Media, gives the ability to create date and time specific playlists of numerous types of digital media content that can then be installed across multiple sites, managed from a standard internet browser anywhere in the world. There are no capital costs, just a simple cost per month per connected signagelive device.

Harmonic announces that its Rhozet Carbon Coder video transcoding solution has been selected by Pharos for integration with the Mediator v3 media management system. The Pharos Mediator and Rhozet Carbon Coder solution is deployed at international broadcaster Viasat, part of the Modern Times Group of companies. Providing optimized workflow management solutions to broadcasters and television, radio, IPTV and telecommunications service providers, Pharos selected Carbon Coder to improve the digital workflow by integrating previously disparate broadcast and IT technology systems.

UTStarcom announces its first IPTV win in Latin America for its industry-leading RollingStream end-to-end IPTV solution with the launch of Brasil Telecom's Videon IPTV service. This is the telecom operator's first video offering to its customers.

Brasil Telecom, one of Brazil's leading wireless and fixed-line communications providers, has deployed UTStarcom's RollingStream solution as the sole end-to-end technology platform for its new Videon video-on-demand IPTV service in Brasilia with plans to expand the service to additional cities in the country's South and Midwest regions in the coming months. In addition to supporting the current subscriber base in Brasilia, the RollingStream system designed for Brasil Telecom maintains an additional capacity of 50,000 subscribers for the expansion.

Motive and AT&T Knowledge Ventures form partnership to market an advanced service assurance solution for IPTV. Using Motive Service Assurance Solutions, providers can rapidly deploy and manage complex service offerings such as high-speed Internet, video, mobile and converged services by enabling comprehensive visibility into and control over the entire service delivery chain.

Cisco talks about its strategy to help service providers in Asia Pacific deliver an end-to-end IPTV solution. The solution, which delivers high quality video with optimal service reliability, will be demonstrated at its booth at the IPTV World Forum Asia 2007. Cisco is the Diamond Sponsor of IPTV World Forum Asia 2007, which runs Dec. 5-7 in Singapore.

Cisco is seeing strong momentum for its IPTV solutions. Among its recent customers are Deutsche Telecom, FastWeb, Free, SES Americom, T-Com Montenegro, T-HT Croatia and Lithuanian provider TEO.

Streaming21 and Cool.revo will showcase their end-to-end IPTV, VoD and HDTV solutions at Inter BEE 2007 in Tokyo, Japan, November 20-22. Visitors will experience exciting live demos of fully-integrated IPTV solutions with amazing high-definition video quality and theater-like display.

Streaming21 and Cool.revo have worked closely to develop and market end-to-end IPTV solutions, including Streaming server, Set-top Box, DRM, Middleware, and networking. The companies have secured Tier 1 Telcos and broadband service providers in Japan, such as IPTV and VoD services for NTT group companies.

Sagem Communications, Orca Interactive and BitBand have been selected by UNE-EPM Telecomunicaciones in Colombia to jointly offer a powerful End-to-End IPTV solution, focused on an enhanced quality of experience for users. Following the successful joint IPTV deployments of Darty in France and On Telecoms in Greece, Sagem Communications, Orca Interactive and BitBand realized that service providers need a reliable and service-enabling solution with the unique advantages offered by their combined solution. The current deployment with UNE-EPM demonstrates the continuing demand for the tailored IPTV solution provided by this truly global and proven alliance.

Digital Fountain releases a new version of its ToughStream solution, which ensures end-to-end quality of service for IPTV networks. ToughStream 2.0, which will be released in January 2008, provides enhanced deployment flexibility for IPTV service providers, enabling them to “surgically” insert protection only where needed without any impact on areas of the network or subscriber nodes that are already performing to required service levels. The ability to strategically insert protection lowers deployment costs and reduces operational complexities stemming from system-wide upgrades that would otherwise be required. This is particularly important for operators who maintain several different set-top-box models and configurations.

National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative announces that more rural telcos are adopting the innovative and cost-effective, end-to-end IPTV service, IP-PRIME. The announcement came during the first general session of the TelcoTV conference. Through a partnership with NRTC and The National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, rural telcos may bring IPTV to rural America through two business opportunities:

1) An end-to-end IPTV service using SES AMERICOM’s IP-PRIME, a centralized, satellite-delivered IPTV distribution solution that includes content transport, headend, and set-top box solutions

2) A programming-only solution for telcos with existing headend facilities or other transport arrangements.