Widevine Technologies, the leading provider of downloadable content protection and digital forensics solutions, announced that Pioneer Telephone Cooperative has fully deployed Widevine Cypher in order to acquire, protect and deliver secure premium broadcast and video-on-demand content from major studios and broadcasters for its Digital TV service.

Pioneer Telephone is one of the few U.S. carriers to have deployed IPTV as a means to stay competitive and grow its customer base in a large geographic area encompassing 72 towns and 1100 miles of fiber optic cable. With the goal to deploy IPTV quickly and cost-effectively, they assembled a team to research, evaluate and test products in the marketplace that would provide an integrated IPTV solution. As part of this process, Pioneer evaluated three content protection vendors. Ultimately, Pioneer selected Widevine to protect the blockbuster content their customers wanted and would be willing to pay for.

"Choosing Widevine's solution was a strategic decision because its content protection platform is highly regarded by Hollywood movie studios. This was critical for us to acquire the top-value content we needed from Warner Bros., Fox, Paramount, HBO and others to entice subscribers, differentiate our service from the competition and grow our business," says Scott Ulsaker, Pioneer's Video Business Manager. "Also key to our decision was that Widevine can meet our emerging needs as we evaluate other services down the road such as mobile and web-based video delivered to PCs."

Based on feedback from customers, Pioneer also just launched Widevine encrypted VOD services for three premium broadcast channels--the Golf Channel, Outdoor Life Channel and the Scripps Network.

"Acquiring popular premium content for a compelling customer offer is critical to successful IPTV deployments and Widevine is uniquely positioned to meet Pioneer's content protection needs as its deployment and services grow," said Brian Baker, Widevine Technologies CEO.

Pioneer’s Digital TV provides up to 169 channels of high-quality entertainment options, including local, basic, premium and Pay-Per-View movie channels, along with CD-quality music channels.