Alcatel-Lucent powers Philippine broadband growth via MiViewTV

MANILA, Philippines - Banking on the growing preference for personalized entertainment, Alcatel-Lucent has launched a next-generation software suite for the Philippine market.

Dubbed as MiViewTV, the video delivery platform allows multiple applications for customizable television and multimedia access of end-users.

In a recent press conference in Manila, Alcatel-Lucent Philippines president and managing director Jonathan Goh noted that the exponential growth of broadband subscriptions in the Philippines has made the country an ideal market for MiViewTV.

“Alcatel-Lucent believes that the Philippine market is mature and ready enough for the next phase of video entertainment or Internet protocol television (IPTV),” said Goh.

Notably, industry pundits anticipate a surge in the number of IPTV subscribers worldwide to roughly 60 million next year. 

According to a market research by Alcatel-Lucent, some 516,000 Filipino homes would have IPTV services subscription by 2015.

Equipped with a best-in-class digital video delivery platform, Alcatel-Lucent’s MiViewTV delivers an advanced suite of fully customizable digital video services for IPTV.

The platform offers content recommendations based on user profile and consumption history, automatically updating available content for users.

Among the chief benefits of MiViewTV is the adaptive streaming feature, which offers a smooth playback of the movies at connectivity speeds that vary according to the access conditions.

This unique feature enhances user experience particularly in countries where the quality of the copper access network is unpredictable and where fiber is unavailable.

“To address this problem, MiViewTV’s platform implements an adaptive technology capable of changing the bit rate on the fly, thus ensuring a continuous playback even when bit rates fall permanently. This feature extends IPTV to unmanaged network or to a multi-room with Video over Wi-Fi as the medium of transmission,” explained Goh.

MiViewTV also provides various advanced playback and call-related features. Users can easily rewind to the beginning of a program being broadcast, pause a broadcast and resume watching, and access past broadcasts at any time.

Subscribers also have the option of receiving, blocking or forwarding incoming calls to voicemail through the IPTV interface, and allows video calls to other users or other capable systems while watching TV or browsing through the platform’s pages.

Alcatel-Lucent’s new IPTV solution represents an attractive proposition to Philippine telecommunication operators on the lookout for new opportunities in multimedia services and increased profitability beyond voice and messaging services.

With MiViewTV, operators can utilize and maximize the use of multimedia in expanding their portfolio of products and make these more in tune with the expectations of costumers.

Through greater market differentiation from personalized and niche marketing, the telecommunication industry can rely on the IPTV technology to cost-effectively support millions of subscribers.

Involved in more than 55 IPTV and Triple Play Service Delivery Architecture deployments worldwide, Alcatel-Lucent is the clear industry leader in IPTV access and middleware, according to MRG report in October 2009. 

One of the company’s more recent successes was the deployment of MiViewTV interactive television platform, including multimedia integration services, with one of its top clients, Telecable in Spain.

Through Alcatel-Lucent’s IPTV solution, TeleCable was able to offer to more than 143,000 customers advanced multimedia services such as broadcast TV and audio channels, VoD, pay per view, a personal video recorder, time shifted TV, pause live TV, videoconferencing, interactive advertisements, and an electronic programming guide.