Northeast Missouri Rural Telephone has chosen Occam’s BLC 6000 multiservice access platform and ON 2300 series optical network terminals to upgrade the second largest of its 14 exchanges from copper to fiber.

As part of its FTTH deployment strategy, Northeast Missouri will initially upgrade their Memphis service area from aerial copper to buried fiber. Additional service areas will be upgraded in the future. “Our first initiative was to get the wires buried,” said David Riddle, Northeast Missouri’s Plant Superintendent. “And if we were going to bury them, it made sense to upgrade to fiber. We considered other vendors but Occam’s reputation and commitment to rural broadband providers impacted our decision.”

Time Warner and YouTube announce an online video distribution agreement that will give consumers access to an extensive variety of high-quality, short-form content owned by Time Warner, including clips from movies, television shows and news programming. The agreement will allow Time Warner's Warner Bros. Entertainment and Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. to program videos on YouTube using a Time Warner embeddable player.

Blockbuster plans to feature the BLOCKBUSTER OnDemand movie download service in select Motorola phones, giving Motorola access to the BLOCKBUSTER OnDemand service and furthering Blockbuster's digital strategy by providing its library of premium digital entertainment to mobile devices for the first time.

Through the agreement select Motorola phones will feature an exclusive BLOCKBUSTER OnDemand application, providing on-the-go download access to Blockbuster's digital library of thousands of current BLOCKBUSTER OnDemand movies.

ZTE Corporation will integrate Optibase’s advanced Media Gateway IPTV encoding platforms in its end-to-end ZTE Eye-Will IPTV solution for deployment by CANTV in Venezuela. This IPTV solution allows CANTV to offer first ever IPTV services in Venezuela, with over 140 channels to 67,000 subscribers. CANTV’s service will feature video-on-demand, live TV pause, personal video recorder capabilities and time-shifted TV and is expected to launch at the end of 2009.

Envivio announces the newest member of its Convergence Series video encoders/transcoders with the introduction of its 4Caster C4 HD. By increasing measurable video quality by as much as 35 percent over previous generations and substantially reducing HD bit rate requirements below 6 Mbps, the 4Caster C4 HD offers significant practical advantages to telcos, IPTV service providers and broadcasters. The 4Caster C4 HD will be on display at IBC 2009 in Amsterdam, Stand 1.D72, September 11-15 and SET 2009 Broadcast and Cable in Sao Paolo, Brazil, August 26-28, Booth 76.

Verismo Networks announces the ability to play content from Hulu, Netflix, CBS, CNN, ESPN, and Amazon Video On Demand via MediaMall Technologies' PlayOn media server and Verismo's award-winning Internet TV Platform, VuNow. VuNow lets people watch millions of free Internet videos directly on their TV. PlayOn, is a combined browser and UPnP digital media server that enables VuNow PoD devices to offer popular video content in the on-screen menu, including Internet video from Netflix, Hulu, CBS, CNN, ESPN, Amazon Video On Demand and more. Verismo Networks and MediaMall Technologies have worked together to optimize the video quality of PlayOn on the VuNow Internet TV platform.

AT&T announces the launch of AT&T U-verse services in parts of the Memphis metropolitan area, including AT&T U-verse TV, AT&T U-verse High Speed Internet and AT&T U-verse Voice. The services will be available for order beginning Monday, Aug. 17.

AT&T U-verse services, which are all delivered over AT&T’s advanced Internet Protocol network, offer a new alternative to cable and an unmatched experience for customers. AT&T U-verse brings together your U-verse TV, U-verse Internet, U-verse Voice and AT&T wireless services — all on one bill — with unique features that provide a new level of integration, convenience and control. AT&T U-verse TV ranked “Highest in Customer Satisfaction in the South Region,” according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2008 Residential Television Service Provider Satisfaction Study.

IPTV Business Models: Profit and loss in the telco TV space discusses the business models and strategies adopted by IPTV services across Europe. IPTV services are rapidly becoming commonplace across much of Europe, however many are struggling to generate subscriber revenues at sustainable levels. This report looks at some of the strategies adopted by European IPTV operators and also examines how the presence of IPTV has impacted the existing broadband business.

On October 22, during the EEBC exhibition, the Forum of Cable Television Operators of Ukraine will be held. The items on the agenda are current trends in the pay television market and the effectiveness of state regulation of the industry.

The Forum will bring together major companies of television and telecommunications market, provider associations, content providers and television equipment suppliers. People’s deputies of Ukraine, chairpersons and representatives of public authorities are welcome.

According to just released data from comScore Media Metrix, Disney Online, which produces the No. 1 ranked community-family and parenting destination on the Web, broke all-time traffic records in July 2009, reaching nearly 34 million unique visitors and beating the previous all-time record of 32.3 million uniques set in August 2008. Disney Online traffic was up month-over-month across all key measurements in July, including unique visitors (+8%), page views (+17%), time spent (+29%) and average daily visits (21%).

Swarmcast launches its live streaming video platform for consumer electronics devices, dubbed Autobahn Live for CE. In conjunction with the launch of this product, Swarmcast announced that its first CE device partnership is with Roku, maker of the popular Roku digital video player.

Swarmcast's partnership with Roku presents live content providers with a new distribution channel, opening a floodgate of possibilities for sports, concerts and other live events. Coupled with improved quality and reliability for live Internet TV, this new path to the television provides content owners with opportunities to grow revenue through subscription or advertising models.

TelcoTV Asia 2009, scheduled for October 13-14 in Shanghai, will be jointly hosted by Shanghai Municipal Administration of Culture, Radio, Film & Television and Shanghai Economy & Information Technology Commission at the Hyatt on the Bund Shanghai Hotel. The conference and exhibition, which will be part of a government-run information week held during the same time, has already confirmed more than 25 speakers from leading operators around the world.

Global Digital Broadcast, proves itself as a leading player in the international IPTV race by partnering with Verismo Networks in order to launch VuNow into the UK. This partnership furthers GDB's existing IPTV services to the UK, whilst extending Verismo Network’s offerings into the UK and Europe. Under the agreement, GDB secures rights to provide it’s IPTV channels via the VuNow service, to the UK, at launch this September 2009

Livestream opens its live and linear video streaming platform by releasing several powerful APIs, thus enabling the Livestream service to be integrated into in-house or third party online video platforms and players.

The Livestream Player API enables customers, programmers, and web agencies to build their own Livestream powered video players and clip libraries using HTML, Adobe Flash or Adobe Flex development environments. Other Platform API's released today include the Live Publishing API, Guide API, Account API and Chat API.

Sigma Designs announces a partnership with 4Home to expand the range of additional services in the home through Sigma’s STB reference designs. As a result of this partnership, Sigma will be able to offer set-top box suppliers an integrated home control solution, based on 4Home’s innovative software platform and the complete Z-Wave ecosystem of RF-based home control devices. The reference design is being unveiled at CableLabs Summer Conference, August 10 - 11, in Keystone, Colorado.