German technical service provider Media Broadcast has won the first customer for its digital TV platform BIQ Services: City carrier Stadtwerke Rüsselsheim and its partner gewobau will distribute the package to their fibre-optic customers.
The line-up of the white-label B2B service comprises around 200 TV channels including public and commercial channels, around 50 HD channels as well as local channels and radio stations. Viewers can sign up for further HD and foreign-language channels as well as pay-TV packages from Sky Deutschland.
The BIQ platform which replaces the previous channel delivery by a cable operator has been implemented as part of the fibre-optic network roll-out in the core areas of the region since spring 2014.
With BIQ Services, Media Broadcast offers cable companies, city carriers and IPTV operators a turnkey product for the provision of their customers with a TV platform without having to deal with rights issues and technical aspects.
The signals are distributed to the partners IP-based through Media Broadcast’s next-generation broadband network (NGN), thus, no satellite reception system has to be installed at the local head-end. The marketing and customer relationship remains in the partners’ hands.
With its TV delivery service which Media Broadcast unveiled two years ago, the company competes with Eutelsat’s KabelKiosk, Deutsche Telekom and large cable companies which also provide smaller network operators and the housing industry with TV services.
