Brasil Telecom prepares for IPTV expansion

August 5, 2008 - Brasil Telecom (BrT) is preparing to expand the availability of its "Videon" IPTV service beyond the capital of Brasilia shortly, according to BrT's Network Engineering Director Sebastião Nacimento, and will also increase the availability of its powerline networking solution shortly.

BrT has apparently nearly finished upgrading the Videon platform to include new features and will launch the new platform soon in nine states, according to Mr. Nascimento, speaking to BNamericas. BrT is also expected to offer HD services and roll out Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) to deliver sufficient bandwidth for the services, as well as offer powerline networking as a home distribution option.

Brasil Telecom is additionally planning to test a powerline networking gateway which can manage distribution of broadband to homes in an apartment building, according to Mr. Nascimento. The company had a reported 1.7mn ADSL subscribers at the end of the first half of this year, of which 1.5mn had connections of at least 1 Mbps.