If You Can’t Beat OTT, Join OTT

Tenn.-based Twin Lakes Telephone Cooperative now is using the FusionTV offering from hybrid-TV and connected-home solutions developer Entone Inc. to give its subscribers a unified experience “that combines the best of live HDTV, digital video recorder (DVR) and cloud services via a single TV user interface.”

FusionTV is a turnkey, managed, white-label service platform that combines pay-TV services with OTT services. Using it, service providers can roll out video-centric broadband services Entone says can increase the average revenue per user (ARPU) and strengthen subscriber satisfaction, all without the upfront capital investment and content acquisition complexities of proprietary VOD systems.

FusionTV is driven by Entone’s 300 and 400 series of hybrid devices that integrate Broadcom’s advanced dual-core processor – providing a flexible platform for supporting an array of video and hybrid TV applications.

In addition, FusionTV is integrated with IPTV middleware and digital rights management (DRM) solutions. With a simple software update, Entone says Twin Lakes subscribers can “access and enjoy VUDU’s streaming library of over 50,000 titles, as well as more than 50 popular cloud-based services such as photo sharing from Flickr and Picasa, and social media via Facebook and Twitter – all without a truck roll.”

Says Jonathan West, general manager and CEO at Twin Lakes Telephone Cooperative, “By offering OTT, not only can we monetize our broadband network, but we continue to strengthen our relationship with our customers.” Adds Ameer Karim, vice president/Hybrid TV Solutions at Entone, “As OTT threatens to marginalize the role of the service provider, the best way for operators to defend against OTT is to embrace it and incorporate it as part of their IPTV or broadband offering.”