Entone Selected by Iowa Network Services for Statewide VOD Deployment

March 27th, 2006 – Entone Technologies, the world’s most deployed IPTV VOD solution provider, announced today that Iowa Network Services (INS) has chosen Entone’s IPTV solutions to enable its network of Independent Telephone Companies to deliver personal television services such as Video-on-Demand (VOD).

INS provides a range of network-based services to 148 Independent Telephone Companies who, in turn, provide telecommunications and digital services to over 500,000 Iowans in 330 different communities throughout the state. To support its VOD deployment, INS has selected Entone’s IPTV VOD solution which includes:

StreamLiner® network video recorder (NVR) – the world’s most deployed IPTV VOD server;
Armada™ Asset Manager – an asset management system for distributed VOD system deployments;
Ingest Gateway – an integrated software solution for managing the ingest process of pre-encrypted digital assets and associated metadata.

Entone's Armada intelligent asset management system automates the distribution of VOD assets from the INS central headend to participating companies via the INS fiber backbone. Participating companies operate autonomous IPTV services, managing their subscribers and tailoring their mixtures of VOD assets according to local market requirements.

Armada automatically ensures that each participating company receives only the VOD assets for which the operator has subscribed. Armada helps INS protect content owners' rights by limiting distribution to only authorized recipients, and honors participating companies' requirements to select content that is appropriate and relevant to their local communities.

“We needed a reliable and flexible system that would allow us to deliver VOD services across the entire state,” stated Howard Juul, INS Vice President of Network Planning. “We selected the Entone solution because of its field-proven track record and its scalability to support new operations as we expand. The Entone solution enables us to leverage our existing network infrastructure so that our participating companies can rapidly deploy IPTV VOD services.”

The INS deployment further exhibits Entone’s commitment to providing highly scalable and cost-effective IPTV VOD content delivery and management solutions to service operators worldwide. In the past 12 months, Entone’s IPTV VOD solution has been selected and deployed by more than 20 telco service operators, including PCCW, the world’s largest IPTV deployment.

“We are excited to be working with INS on their IPTV VOD deployment,” stated Steve McKay, Entone’s CEO. “With 148 telco operators, INS represents one of the largest potential markets among US communications operators. Our partnership is off to a great start and we look forward to supporting them in their success.”  

For more information about Iowa Network Services, go to: http://www.IowaNetworkServices.com.

For more information about Entone Technologies, go to http://www.entone.com.