Orange, Thomson and Sagem Communications have joined forces to create a joint venture aimed at creating a standard for the interconnection of equipment within the multimedia ecosystem.
The new “Soft At Home” joint venture seeks to facilitate the deployment and interoperability of digital equipment in the home and make it possible to combine it with enhanced and innovative services. Soft At Home plans to harness technologies and experiences of its founding shareholders. The resulting software will be offered to players in this sector, such as telecommunications operators, third-party developers, OEMs and manufacturers. For instance, Thomson and Sagem Communications both will be incorporating the Soft At Home software into their offerings.
The companies said their initiative will enable operators to launch new innovative services more quickly, tailored more effectively to their differentiation requirements. In this way, the next generation of residential gateways and TV decoders that will be used by Orange in 2008 will be equipped with Soft At Home software.
Orange already is already serving over 6 million Liveboxes and has over 1 million subscribers for its IPTV package.http://www.softathome.comhttp://www.orange.com
