New research conducted by The Nielsen Company reveals the "Extreme Techies" segment stream significantly more online video content, watching up to 91 minutes (1.5 hours) per week, compared to the mean of 44 minutes for all broadband viewers. Representing eight percent of the total adult 18 and older broadband population, which equals 4.6 million viewers, this group is the most advanced of all segments in consumption of online video. Furthermore, they are technology innovators, with 38% connecting their computers to their televisions via devices such as a Media Center PC or direct connection to view TV and movie content.

AT&T U-verse customers will be the first to find out what animated favorites Wallace and Gromit are up to in their latest comedic escapade. AT&T and Aardman Animations announce that AT&T U-verse TV will exclusively feature the U.S. premiere of the new Wallace and Gromit short film, “A Matter of Loaf and Death.”

Television is taking radical new forms on the Internet
Ubiquitous broadband has sent online video viewing rocketing, with more than 13 billion views per month in the USA. Social networking sites such as MySpace and Bebo are now major audience aggregators that commission original Web shows tailored for their members.

ActiveVideo Networks has reached an agreement to acquire Avinity Systems BV, bringing together the two leading providers of cloud-based interactive TV platforms and applications, and expanding the reach and availability of the Web-based user experiences that are redefining interactive television (iTV 2.0).

blinkx announces a partnership with FOXSports.com on MSN, one of the Web's leading sports sites. More sports news and clips than ever before are now available on www.blinkx.com. Visitors will now have easy access to nearly 1,000 sports video clips, including exclusive footage of top athletes and daily, up-to-the-minute sports updates with Fox Wire. In total, FOXSports.com produces more than four hours per day of exclusive Web video content, all of which will now be discoverable via blinkx's search engine.

SK Broadband has deployed Harmonic’s Direct-2-Edge solution — encompassing Harmonic’s NSG 9000 universal edgeQAMs and D2E control software — for the world’s largest commercial launch of cable IPTV to date. The landmark deployment enables SK Broadband to provide a uniform broadcast IPTV service across its cable, xDSL, and FTTx access networks, providing substantial operational efficiencies and advantages. Subscribers can also receive uninterrupted, high-speed Internet access of up to 150 Mbps to the home, powered by Harmonic’s NSG 9000 using a modular CMTS architecture and delivered to a DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem.

Microsoft launched Microsoft Mediaroom with virtualization, making Mediaroom the first IPTV platform to offer virtualization support. Mediaroom with virtualization can deliver up to a sixfold reduction in the number of physical servers required to support a full-featured IPTV service, significantly reducing hardware and management costs and speeding time to market for Mediaroom customers by up to three weeks.

ITS group is pleased to announce as platinum sponsor of the 11th Annual Arab International Telecom Development Summit for Arab States.ITS develops product-based customer management and billing solutions for communications and content service providers. ITS’ convergent platform enables service providers to deliver voice, data, video, and content services with multiple networks, payment models, pricing plans, and value chains. ITS’ unique approach is designed to provide its customers superior return on innovation with maximum value and lower total cost of ownership.

Orascom Telecom has announced to be a summit partner of the 11th Annual Arab International Telecom Development Summit, taking place on the 28th and the 29th of May 2009 in Beirut, Lebanon. Alfa, the Lebanese mobile operator managed by Orascom Telecom since February 1, 2009 will be exhibiting at the same summit.

EchoStar agrees to deliver its ViP-TV video transport service to Canby Telcom, a provider of telecommunications and entertainment services to more than 8,000 customers in the northern Willamette Valley of Oregon. Taking advantage of EchoStar's IP-Prime Conversion Program, Canby Telcom will receive transport of up to 42 popular high definition TV channels to its IP headend.

Oracle Communications announced it’s co-sponsorship in the 11th Annual Arab Telecom Development Summit which will open tomorrow, 28th of May at Habtoor Grand Hotel in Beirut, Lebanon.

Main solution to be showcased in Arabcom:

Oracle CRM On Demand: Unlocking Customer Value
Oracle CRM On Demand gives you the power to break down departmental silos and gain a 360-degree view of your customers.

Kabel BW has selected Harmonic and eventIS solutions for its VOD commercial trial, to be launched in late 2009. This implementation represents Germany’s first major cable VOD service deployment. Harmonic is powering the complete VOD delivery infrastructure, with industry-leading products including StreamLiner 2000 video servers, Armada intelligent asset manager, CLEARcut offline content preparation, Rhozet Carbon Coder universal transcoding, NSG 9000 universal edgeQAMs, ProStream 1000 stream processing platform and NMX Digital Service Manager. Kabel BW has selected the eventIS TRAXIS, SPECTRIS and PRODIS VOD back-office products.

Following the impressive performance of the company and the manifest expertise of the company in Telecom Infrastructure development, Engr. Fazal Hussain will be speaking at Arabcom Summit on day 2 of the Conference, 29th of May 2009, to discuss the benefits of infrastructure sharing in ICT development with the topic of “ Building Infrastructure for Convergence.

Dreampark announces the delivery of its Dreamgallery middleware to the Croatian market with Croatian system integrator CS Computer Systems. The system was deployed for OiV, a Croatian state-owned nationwide broadcasting and channel aggregation organization.

Openwave will showcase its latest mobile internet and messaging software applications and infrastructure at Arabcom Summit 2009 in Beirut, Lebanon on May 28 - 29, 2009. Michael Rodgers, product marketing strategist at Openwave will deliver a presentation on the topic “Mobile Data 2.0: Next Gen Services for Network Operators in Emerging Markets.”