Tuesday, November 27, 2007

TeliaSonera Launches TelcoTV in Finland

TeliaSonera launched an IPTV services in the Greater Helsinki Area on November 29, 2007. Sonera Broadband TV offers broadcast channels, video on demand, and HDTV. The service is designed for households for which Sonera’s 100 Mbps FTTH broadband is available. TeliaSonera has about 170,000 cable TV customers in Finland.

In addition to free digital terrestrial channels, Sonera Broadband TV provides eight ty channels, of which Discovery Channel, Silver, Voom and Luxe are in HD. In addition to these, Animal Planet, Discovery Civilisation, Discovery Science and Discovery Travel & Living are also available. The offering is supplemented by SF Anytime, a video on demand service with a weekly updated selection of over 1,000 videos including, Finnish movies. The basic service is free of charge for the first 12 months. A premium option is available with a movie package with a monthly charge offer of 29 euros. In addition, this package also includes the Canal+ Total channel package.

This TelcoTV service is available today to 85,000 households in the Greater Helsinki Area that are covered by its FTTH network. This network provides coverage in the 15 largest towns in Finland and should cover 150 thousand homes by the end of 2007.

An IPTV offering is an important part of an FTTH service. TeliaSonera has not aggressively deployed a DSL based IPTV service since it also offers a cable TV service. FTTH is a clear upgrade from cable technology, so including a video service is an important strategy.

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