Ericsson announced it has been selected by SaskTel, the leading ICT provider in Saskatchewan, Canada with approximately 1.4 million customers, for a project to upgrade its TV service offering to enable the delivery of next generation IPTV services.
Under the agreement, SaskTel will implement the Ericsson MediaFirst solution suite this year, with plans to launch its enhanced and expanded IPTV service commercially across Saskatchewan in early 2018.
The Ericsson MediaFirst platform is designed to provide SaskTel’s subscribers with new features via a new pay TV in-home and TV everywhere product. New features such as a personalised interface across all screens and the ability to watch live TV and access content on demand on any device will also be offered to existing maxTV subscribers.
Ericsson’s MediaFirst solution suite incorporates the MediaFirst TV platform, video processing, video delivery and video storage and processing platform (VSPP). The MediaFirst TV platform is a software-defined, cloud-based TV platform designed to enable a converged multi-screen experience encompassing pay TV in-home, TV everywhere and OTT services utilising any content source and delivery network.
The MediaFirst platform leverages a devops approach to provide enhanced flexibility and scalability; it also features analytics tools that help operators to address relevant and related content and promotions to viewers.
Ericsson noted that MediaFirst video processing allows virtualisation in content exchange, distribution and software-defined live UHD encoding, while MediaFirst video delivery addresses each stage of the media delivery chain, including VSPP, to enable advanced time-shifted services such as cloud DVR.
SaskTel serves a total of approximately 1.4 million customer connections in Saskatchewan, including 617,000 wireless accesses, 389,000 wireline accesses, 273,000 Internet accesses and 111,000 maxTV subscribers. SaskTel and its subsidiaries offer a range of ICT solutions including voice, data and Internet, wireless data, TV, data centre and cloud-based services.
