US telecommunications company Hotwire Communications has chosen the end-to-end platform developed by Swiss OTT and IPTV solutions provider Zattoo to introduce a new TV everywhere service.
Florida-based Hotwire Communications offers ISP services under its Fision brand to a large and growing number of communities and customers in Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania and states along the Eastern seaboard.
The TV everywhere service will be launched in Q4 2017. In the initial phase, the focus will be on mobile devices with iOS, Android and Windows 10 operating systems as well as on a browser player for PC and Mac. Soon afterwards, the service will be extended to include streaming on various other devices.
Along with linear live TV and video-on-demand in SD, HD and Ultra HD quality, the service will offer interactive functions such as instant restart, time shift, catch-up TV and network DVR.
In Europe, Zattoo has been providing its fully hosted and managed end-to-end solution to telcos, cable and mobile network operators for several years. The Zattoo platform covers the whole chain from signal ingest to applications including content protection for efficient monetisation. With this scalable platform, the Zattoo TV Hub, operators do not have to invest in hardware or software for their own TV service.
For the market entry in the US, Zattoo will now deploy a central TV hub in the US as well. It will be hosted in Hotwire Communications’ co-location facility in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, forming the basis to serve additional operators in the Americas.
“Among all the solutions we looked at, Zattoo stood out with their experience and scale serving their millions of TV customers in Europe as well as with the support of a wide range of devices. A key deciding factor was the rich feature set that Zattoo’s TV-as-a-service platform supports out of the box,” said Emanuele Jones, Vice President of Engineering at Hotwire Communications.
Gernot Jaeger, Chief Officer B2B TV Solutions at Zattoo, added: “We are excited that Hotwire Communications is the first US service provider to count on Zattoo. The entry into the US market is a crucial step for Zattoo in our global expansion strategy and roadmap.”
