The National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative announces a strategic investment in Avail Media for the deployment of IPTV. As part of the same transaction, Avail Media has completed a merger with TVN Entertainment, the VOD company. The NRTC investment enables access to all the best programming available from Hollywood, network providers, and independent producers, as well as ensures members a stake in a robust, next-generation IPTV transport platform.

Concurrent with this investment, Avail Media completed a merger with TVN Entertainment, the world’s largest television-on-demand company, reaching over 46 million households with more than 120 million viewers throughout the U.S., Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. With the addition of TVN Entertainment’s service portfolio, the combined company becomes the largest independent provider of end-to-end content aggregation, management, and distribution offerings.

NRTC has been a pioneer in introducing advanced telecommunications services to improve the quality of life in rural America. During the mid-1990s, NRTC provided the first external funding and led in the launch of DIRECTV, activating nearly 2 million of its initial subscribers. More recently, NRTC repeated that success by investing in WildBlue, a satellite Internet access provider, and activating all of WildBlue’s first-year customers. And last month, NRTC closed an investment and distribution agreement with DigitalBridge, a leading WiMAX broadband company, to help expand broadband Internet services to unserved and underserved communities.