Cisco plays leading role in Deutsche Telekom’s IPTV ambitions - and not just for networks

April 29th, 2006 - More details are emerging about Deutsche Telekom’s IPTV ambitions across Western Europe, where the company plans to offer services in Germany, France and Spain in the second half of the year. The video services are wrapped up within the T-Home triple-play brand from T-Online and according to Kai-Uwe Ricke, chairman of the Board of Management, Deutsche Telekom AG, “Our objective is to offer customers a convenient plug-and-play solution that can be set up and operated both quickly and easily.”

In Germany, the IPTV deployment will utilise the broadband network being developed by T-Com, Deutsche Telekom’s fixed infrastructure division. This network is based on a Cisco IP Next-Generation Network (IP NGN) architecture and incorporates Cisco 12000 Series routers at the provider edge, Cisco 10008 Series routers as Broadband Remote Access Server (BRAS) platforms, and Cisco Catalyst 6509 Series switches.

The T-Home service is also being delivered with Cisco IP set-top boxes supporting the Microsoft TV IPTV Edition software platform.

The Cisco set-tops are called the T-Home X 300T Media Receiver and are taken from the KiSS series. Cisco acquired KiSS Technology in September 2005. The T-Home X 300T Media Receiver is a hybrid DVB-T and IPTV receiver that supports HDTV and incorporates DVR functionality on its 80Gb hard drive. This device can be controlled remotely over the Internet.

"Cisco and Deutsche Telekom have a long history of collaboration and
innovation to develop and deploy advanced services to meet customer needs," states Mike Volpi, senior vice president, Routing and Service Provider Technology Group at Cisco Systems. "We are eager to continue building on this history and also to extend our collaboration with Microsoft as we work together to drive growth of IPTV globally."

Enrique Rodriguez, corporate VP for the Microsoft TV Division at Microsoft Corporation, adds: "This is Microsoft's largest IPTV agreement in Europe to date and we are pleased to be working with Cisco to help Deutsche Telekom deliver high-quality broadband entertainment to consumers across Germany."