Siemens Communications Inc., one of the leading providers of Internet protocol television (IPTV) solutions in the United States and worldwide, announced the addition of a new regional broadband customer, Oxford Networks. With the Siemens SURPASS Home Entertainment portfolio of IPTV solutions, Oxford Networks is providing advanced IP television services - via fiber to the home (FTTH) - to customers in Central and Western Maine.

"The flexibility of the Siemens SURPASS Home Entertainment solution is ideal for fiber infrastructures," said Craig Gunderson, chief operating officer, Oxford Networks. "The Siemens solution enables us to tailor the customer interface and provide an array of innovative IP video services and grow these services to match emerging customer demands for more interactive entertainment and communication home networks."

Many of Oxford Networks' customers, Gunderson noted, are already enjoying new interactive services such as on-demand entertainment, long distance learning from the home and video conferencing. Oxford Networks is now equipped to provide IPTV services to more than 7,000 of its customers.

Many service providers are turning to bandwidth-friendly FTTH networks to support emerging multimedia-hungry services, including high-definition television, and applications that enable interactive entertainment features as well as voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) communication services and, ultimately, IP Multimedia Systems (IMS) that bring together the home network with game consoles and other home devices as well as Wi-Fi connections. The SURPASS Home Entertainment solution provides flexibility for service providers to interoperate with fiber, copper and mixed infrastructure deployments.

The Siemens SURPASS Home Entertainment portfolio is built on an open, standards-based architecture that enables efficient back-office management tools and building blocks for the convergence of entertainment, communications and smart home solutions. The solution includes IPTV middleware from Myrio, a Siemens company. User-friendly IPTV gateways, middleware and home network convergence are the key components of the Siemens LifeWorks vision for anytime and anywhere access to digital media.

Siemens provides end-to-end IPTV solutions to more than 75 U.S. regional operators as well as many more worldwide, including national operators such as KPN Royal Dutch Telecom and Belgacom in Europe and Advanced Datanetwork Communications (ADC) in Thailand. In December, China's Shanghai Telecom Co., Ltd., and Shanghai Media Group (SMG) announced it will be collaborating with Siemens to offer IPTV services to a market that includes 25 million broadband users and 360 million television viewers. Globally, Siemens IPTV contracts cover more than 38 million broadband lines.