Romania remains very much at the heart of what is a rapidly changing TV industry in Central and Eastern Europe.
Take Telekom Romania, the incumbent telco formerly known as Romtelecom. It first came to our attention as an upcoming player through its DTH platform Dolce, which was launched in 2006 and within three years had already secured 850,000 subscribers. Its take-up grew still further in 2011, when the OTE-backed company acquired two smaller DTH services, named Boom TV and AKTA, and integrated them into its own operation.
Romtelecom also entered what was – and indeed still is – a relatively undeveloped IPTV market in 2009 through the launch of a platform named Dolce Interactiv. In addition, it re-entered the cable market through the wholly owned subsidiary NextGen Communications.
Against the backdrop of strong competition from its main rivals RCS&RDS and UPC Romania, the now Telekom Romania – it was rebranded in 2014 – has continued grow its pay-TV subscriber base, albeit at a slower pace than in the early years. As of the beginning of this year, it amounted to just over 1.4 million.
However, it has also had to keep up technologically with its rivals and at the same time satisfy changing consumer tastes. This led to Telekom Romania embarking on a large infrastructure upgrade in order to launch Telekom TV. A new IPTV and OTT service, it includes live, VOD and nPVR and by all accounts has been a success.
Telekom TV has been developed with the assistance of a number of companies including Viaccess-Orca, which has provided it with its TV Everywhere solution Voyage. Other companies involved in its development include Capgemini, Zenterio, Akamai Technology Broadpeak, Harmonic and Accedo.
Given its launch was one of the fastest IPTV deployments ever undertaken, Telekom TV provides a good case study into such a project.
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