Pioneer Telephone launches CloverLeaf's DotDaily localized interactive television service providing localized news and information to IPTV subscribers in 72 exchanges in Oklahoma. CloverLeaf's interactive localized news & information TV service (often known as a walled garden), provided to Pioneer Telephone and other telephone and cable companies, includes news and sports coverage from Associated Press, local weather from AccuWeather, local cinema guides and horoscopes; as well as local content including community events calendars, school lunch menus and community slide shows, published by community organizations using CloverLeaf's DashDaily community content publishing tools.

Regional service provider Kerman Telephone has went with Nortel to roll out wireless data and IPTV services to its customers in this central California town.

KermanTel plans to add these services by the first quarter of 2008. Future plans may also include fixed and mobile VoIP as well as integrated multimedia to complete a quadruple-play offering of telephone, Internet, TV and wireless services.

Occam announces that North Central Telephone Cooperative has purchased components of Occam’s Broadband Loop Carrier system to provide its customers with advanced services, including Triple Play and IP video.

NCTC was formed in 1951 and initially received loans from the Rural Electrification Agency (now known as the Rural Utilities Service or RUS) to provide service. Prior to NCTC, people in rural Tennessee and Kentucky lacked dependable telephone service as for-profit providers deemed the area too sparsely populated to effectively build out and maintain. Today, NCTC offers a wide range of services to residents and businesses in north central Tennessee and south central Kentucky.

Fujitsu Network Communications announces that Mountain Telephone has deployed its FLASHWAVE optical networking products and NETSMART management solution to deliver IPTV services to West Liberty, Kentucky. An expanded suite of voice, data and video services will be possible through the use of these Fujitsu platforms.

Mornington Communications selects the Calix C7 multiservice access platform and the Calix Management System to enable a wide array of new services. The company has also purchased Calix’s four-port 2.5 Gbps GPON service interface module for the C7, enabling Mornington Communications to deliver advanced, very-high-bandwidth services such as high definition IPTV. The Calix C7 MSAP is being deployed throughout Mornington’s ILEC and CLEC operating areas in southwestern Ontario.

HickoryTech has launched its Digital TV service in North Mankato, Minn. and Janesville, Minn. A new entertainment option is now available to residents in these communities offering digital quality and customized packages at attractive rates. The state-of-the-art broadband network is one of the first of its kind to support Digital TV in Minnesota.

With the addition of North Mankato and Janesville, HickoryTech offers its triple play services of Digital TV, high-speed DSL, and local and long-distance phone service to 10 communities. North Mankato is located 85 miles south of the Twin Cities and includes more than 5,100 households. Janesville is located 75 miles south of the Twin Cities and has more than 800 households.

After some final trials and tweaking, SES AMERICOM said today that its end-to-end IPTV solution, IP-PRIME, is commercially available. IP-PRIME has received extensive and successful technical trials with large, medium and small sized telcos across the United States, and is now available to any North American telco looking for a turnkey solution to offer their customers a world-class television service.

SES AMERICOM's IP-PRIME gives telecommunications companies the ability to offer television together with their other services. It goes without saying that adding television service can be complex and expensive, but IP-PRIME minimizes the risk of a complex technical integration, simplifies difficult program acquisition challenges and lowers their financial risks for launching a television service.

Bell Aliant has chosen Widevine to protect its broadcast service, Aliant TV. Bell Aliant evaluated the entire market for content security and determined that Widevine's content security and proven deployments with other Canadian service providers -- SaskTel, Telus and MTS Allstream -- were key factors in meeting their business goals now and as their service expands. Widevine also was able to meet Aliant's aggressive time-to-market goals. Bell Aliant's conversations with the broadcasters yielded a high regard for Widevine's patented content security capabilities and fast renewability of client security on a wide range of consumer platforms.

SaskTel has selected Symmetricom's next generation time and frequency solutions for a network-wide synchronization upgrade. SaskTel, one of Canada's most progressive full service communications companies, will equip its offices throughout Saskatchewan to support next-generation services including IPTV, VoIP and 3G wireless. SaskTel will source Symmetricom's products, engineering services and ongoing support from Empowered Networks, a leading solutions integrator and Symmetricom's key partner in Canada.

High quality time and frequency alignment is an essential network infrastructure component that facilitates the reliable transmission of voice, video and data.

Here are some interesting articles from Brian Dipert on his experience with SureWest, an experienced VoIP and IPTV provider in sunny California. His first article, "SureWest: Initial Post-Install Fiber Details and Thoughts," highlights his initial impressions on broadband, IPTV, and VoIP as well as the insitallation process to receive fiber-based triple play. He has since posted a follow up to this article entitled "SureWest: Broadband, IPTV and VoIP Hands-On," which deals with everything from his installation guy (Chris) wiggling through his dirty crawl space, discussing SureWest's VoIP service and features, and his thoughts on SureWest's IPTV solution including their PVR (or lack there-of) and the AmiNET120 set-top box.

NxTV signed a five-year agreement with MGM Grand Detroit, the 400-room luxury hotel and entertainment destination owned by MGM MIRAGE scheduled to open in 4Q'07, to install the nation's first 100% IP-based distribution system for in-room entertainment. High Definition IP Video On Demand and IPTV Free to Guest content as well as high-speed Internet access, VoIP telephony and mini-bar communication systems will all ride over one converged, Internet Protocol network for greater cost savings, reliability, improved applications integration and increased revenue.

Eagle Broadband has entered into an agreement to sell a portion of its fiber network located in northwest Harris County, Texas and Fort Bend County, Texas to Optical Entertainment Networks

Under the terms of the letter agreement, OEN and Eagle will execute an asset purchase agreement no later than May 18, 2007, which will provide for a closing on June 15, 2007. OEN will pay Eagle $1.9 million over a period of 13 months and the asset purchase agreement will also provide for an additional payment of $800,000 to Eagle in the event OEN is purchased by a third party or if OEN sells the network to a third party.

Eagle is currently providing Network Operating Center services to OEN on this network and expects to continue doing so going forward.

Verizon will soon begin deploying an advanced technology from Alcatel-Lucent that will dramatically improve the capabilities of Verizon's industry-leading 16-state fiber-to-the-premises network.

The new technology, called a gigabit passive optical network, increases the aggregate broadband speeds on Verizon's FTTP systems by four times downstream to the customer, and by eight times upstream back to the Internet. This provides the capability for future enhancements to FiOS Internet Services and FiOS TV. Verizon will be the first major telecommunications company to deploy the new technology to customers in the United States.

Optibase announced that W.T. Services Inc. has selected Optibase's encoding platforms, video on-demand (VOD), middleware and conditional access for a new IPTV system. Working closely with CHR Solutions, Optibase will deliver a system that will allow W.T. Services to offer IPTV and on-demand services in the town of Hereford, Texas via FTTP. Partners in the project include Dascom Systems Group, BitBand and additional technology vendors.

Telco Systems' EdgeGate CPE 232 and 482 IP media gateways, which provide broadband Internet access, VoIP, and IPTV to the consumer's home over fiber, were selected for use in fiber-to-the-home projects funded by the United States Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service (RUS) following review by the RUS Technical Committee for telecommunications products.