Glashart Media is opening up access to the Dutch FTTH network for content owners and other parties that are interested in offering video, according to Reggefiber director Bert Meijering.
Speaking at the Telecompaper Connected TV conference in Utrecht (April 27), he said anyone interested in distributing content on the network can “easily and fast deliver their own interactive cloud based TV services, using html5 applications.”
Glashart Media offers the infrastructure, but the content owner will develop the application and maintain the relationship with its clients. However, the operator is able to offer various levels of content security and third parties can also use the company’s billing and collecting infrastructure.
The service is called 0900-TV, named after the premium telephony service, “We just facilitate any service, content and priciong is fully up to the content owners, who are free to develop their own business models.”
Glashart Media is owned by Reggefiber, the country’s largest FTTH operator, which is jointly owned by Reggborg and KPN. The network currently passes 700,000 homes and has 200,000 active customers. Glashart offers a basic analogue tier of 39 TV channels and 40 radio stations as well as a similar digital TV offer, with an extented tier of 75 TV channels, six HD TV channels, 100 radio stations and catch-up TV from three main broadcasters, NPO (Nederland 1, 2 and 3), RTL and SBS.
A premium digital bouquet consists of a further 45 channels and a total of 16 HD channels. A Turkish bouquet with 32 basic channels, 14 premium channels and four sports channels will be available soon as an a la carte option. Other ethnic tiers will become available in the near future, including an Arabic offer. A four-channel Star TV Hindi bouquet is already available.
