Telefonica Brazil's Vivo Participacoes unit has begun offering its new IPTV service over its Fiber to the Home (FTTH) network in Sao Paulo.
The rollout of the IPTV service comes after the telco conducted what it says was a successful trial in selected homes in the city. In the coming weeks, Vivo plans to conduct a major marketing campaign for the service.
Customers will be able to purchase the service, which initially will target the company's FTTH subscriber base, for an introductory price of $36.70 a month.
Eligible customers will also be able to access a mix of both traditional standard free TV and pay-per-view channels in addition to social networking sites and interactive applications such as Facebook. And because the new service leverages Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) Mediaroom IPTV software, customers can use Multiroom DVR, video-on-demand (both transactional and subscription) and instantaneous channel skipping features.
The IPTV service is currently available to potentially 500,000 homes in Sao Paulo, with plans to extend to another 600,000 next year. Vivo asked Anatel, Brazil's telecom regulator, to grant approval of its request for new 'Conditional Access Service (SeaC)' licenses so it can offer the service in other areas besides Sao Paulo.
In related news, Vivo's sister company, TVA, is preparing its Hybrid Fiber Coax (HFC) network, which currently covers 700,000 to 800,000 households, to support IPTV. Telefonica has set a goal to extend IPTV over both its FTTH and HFC networks to 1.5 million homes in Brazil by the middle of 2013.
For more:
- TeleGeography has this article
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