Optibase announces that Airtel Broadband & Telephone Services chose the Optibase H.264 Media Gateway 5100 IPTV encoding platforms for its planned IPTV service offerings. Airtel Broadband & Telephone Services provides broadband & telephone services in 94 cities in India. Bharti Airtel is currently undertaking IPTV trials in a thousand households and is planning to launch its IPTV services in the last quarter of the current calendar year. Optibase’s carrier grade TV streaming platforms, incorporated in UTStarcom IP-based end-to-end networking solution, will be utilized by Bharti Airtel to supply high-quality H.264 video.

The first introduction of IPTV services in India took place two years ago. Having installed video over IP solutions in three out of the four major IPTV Indian service providers; Aksh Optifibre Limited, Time Broadband Services and Bharti Airtel Limited, Optibase is becoming pivotal in driving the growth of IPTV deployment in India. With Optibase’s advanced H.264 streaming platforms, Indian service providers have the ideal IPTV offering to attract new customers and preserve current ones, by using a cost effective combination of top quality picture resolution at low bit rates.

“Being the leading service provider, we at Airtel are constantly taking initiatives to offer the best in class services to our customers, backed by a sound infrastructure to support these exciting services,” said Atul Bindal, President, Broadband & Telephone Services, Bharti Airtel. “Utilizing Optibase’s advanced encoding platform is a strategic step in the creation of world-class infrastructure for our IPTV services. The platform will enable us to offer superior video quality that redefines television entertainment for our customers.”

Amir Phillips, Chief Financial Officer at Optibase commented, “Given that India is an emerging and significant market in the growing IPTV world. The deployment of Optibase advanced IPTV encoding platforms by a tier one Telco operator, such as Bharti Airtel, represents an important business relationship for our company.”