Saturday, October 13, 2007

Telenor to Offer FTTH and IPTV in 2008

Telenor, the incumbent carrier in Norway, stated that it will roll out IPTV service in 2008. There are rumors that Telenor will use Thomson's middleware software, but there is no confirmation at this time.

Telenor has also has been mandated to provide broadband access to 100 percent of the 2 million homes in the country. It plans to use a combination GPON, VDSL, ADSL, and WiMAX to reach all households. It plans to rollout GPON in the cities to counter strong competition from competitive FTTH providers. It plans to install Alcatel-Lucent VDSL capable DSLAMs in areas where fiber is not appropriate. It had been using Nokia DSLAMs, but apparently is dissatisfied with their performance. It is using Airspan for its WiMAX deployment, which has already begun.

Telenor is one of the last Western European incumbents to commit to IPTV. Its fiber based competitors have been delivering IPTV service for several years already so Telenor has a lot of catching up to do.

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