Microsoft Mediaroom

Accedo Broadband--a Stockholm-based provider of interactive TV applications and content for IPTV and broadband-connected consumer electronics devices (note: the company, which was founded by telecom and media entrepreneurs, Michael Lantz and Fredrik Andersson, offers a range of applications, but is best known for its games)--said last week that it has launched an interactive TV games service on Colombian telco UNE's IPTV platform.

Paris-based interactive TV games specialist, Visiware, announced Tuesday that its Playin'TV games are now available on Infostrada TV, a Microsoft Mediaroom-powered IPTV platform operated by Italian telco, Wind Telecommunications.

According to the company, six games from its Playin'TV catalog that have been adapted for the Mediaroom platform--"Solitaire," "Reversi," "Tactic 2 Vitamin," "Twin Match Ocean," "Tweezle Lab" and "Buzzbee"--are now available free of charge in Infostrada TV's "Extra" section.

Manitoba Telecom Services-subsidiary, MTS Allstream, says it has launched its IPTV service, MTS Ultimate TV, in Brandon, Manitoba. The HDTV-enabled service, which is powered by technology from Alcatel-Lucent and by the Microsoft Mediaroom middleware and applications platform, offers a range of advanced services, including Whole Home PVR (MTS Allstream claims that it the first service to offer such a feature in Canada) with the ability to record and watch up to three programs at once on up to three connected TV's, VOD, over 250 digital TV and music channels (of which 30 are in HD), high-speed Internet, and an advanced EPG with picture-in-picture display.

AT&T's Microsoft Mediaroom-powered IPTV Service, U-verse TV, last week began running pop-up ads that offer subscribers free Domino's pizza and a 2-liter bottle of coke, if they upgrade their subscription to include the Showtime premium programming service or AT&T's The Movie Package or U300 programming packages (which include Showtime channels). The ads, which invite viewers to call a toll-free number to upgrade their service and then go to http://www.dominosoffer.com to redeem a coupon, provide them with two options: "Dismiss" and "More Info." The existence of the campaign was first reported by DSL Reports, which was alerted to it by users complaining about the pop-up ads in its U-verse discussion forum.

Dublin, Ireland-based interactive TV applications provider, emuse, announced Wednesday that it recently teamed with Portuguese Internet portal, Sapo.pt, which is owned by incumbent telco, Portugal Telecom, to revamp the interactive TV version of the portal on Portugal Telecom's Microsoft Mediaroom-powered IPTV service, Meo. Dubbed Sapo at Meo, the new version of the interactive TV portal launched last month.

SureWest Communications, an independent triple-play provider that offers service in and around Sacramento, Calif. and Kansas City, MO, announced Tuesday that it will deploy the Microsoft Mediaroom IPTV platform to power an advanced TV service over its IP-based fiber-to-the-home and copper networks in the greater Sacramento region. The company, which previously used Minerva's IPTV middleware platform for its Sacramento-area TV offering, anticipates that the new Mediaroom-powered service will be available to new customers by the end of the year.

Neptuny, a Milan-based company that offers a digital TV recommendation engine called ContentWise, announced Monday that it has joined the Microsoft Mediaroom Application Developer Program. The program is targeted at third-party developers that are building interactive TV applications that run on the Microsoft Mediaroom IPTV platform. "This membership is strategically aimed at developing an integration between our product ContentWise and the Microsoft Mediaroom platform and will allow us to be able to offer personalized recommendations for IPTV to major European operators," Stefano Moscetti, Neptuny's head of digital media business development, said in a prepared statement.

Microsoft last week announced that French telecommunications and network services provider, Viapass, has selected its Microsoft Mediaroom platform, equipped with the platform's recently launched virtualization feature, as the basis for an interactive TV-enabled IPTV service that its Viapass TV subsidiary plans to offer to hotels, hospitals and MDU's.

Microsoft announced Wednesday that it is seeking to make its Mediaroom IPTV platform more cost-effective for smaller operators to deploy, by adding support for virtualization.

In the course of announcing earnings for its fiscal fourth quarter and year Thursday, UK incumbent telco, BT, said that its Microsoft Mediaroom-powered IPTV service, BT Vision, had 423,000 customers as of March 31st, compared to 398,000 at the end of the prior quarter, and that in March "customer viewing was an average of 30 views" (note: BT Vision is enabled via a hybrid set-top box that allows viewers to access linear channels from the UK's free-to-air digital terrestrial platform, Freeview, alongside IP-de

Russian telco, VimpelCom, has rolled out an IPTV service in Moscow powered by the Microsoft Mediaroom IPTV platform. Dubbed Beeline TV ("Beeline" is also the brand used by Vimpelcom for its 800,000-subscriber high-speed Internet service) and billed as Russia's first Mediaroom-powered IPTV service, the new service offers up to 125 linear-TV channels (four of which are available in HD), a VOD service with around 3,000 titles, coverage of major Russian soccer leagues and championships, an EPG with keyword-search functionality, DVR/PVR (enabled by a Motorola set-top with a 160GB hard drive), and instant channel change. Its launch follows the conclusion of a trial in which Vimpelcom offered IPTV service under its Corbina TV brand.

Pleasanton, Calif.-based 180Squared--a company that bills itself as "a team of Microsoft Mediaroom alumni with extensive Mediaroom product and services expertise" (note: Mediaroom is Microsoft's IPTV platform)--announced Wednesday the launch of a Mediaroom solution, dubbed "Mediaroom in a Box," that is geared towards smaller carriers. The company says that, while working with Microsoft to support existing Mediaroom customers, it has also been working towards developing an end-to-end solution that will "help smaller carriers in the US to sharpen their business case around IPTV" and "support Mediaroom as the middleware of choice." "Some new things have been happening in Microsoft recently," 180Squared founder and VP, Amir Littman, said in a prepared statement.

At the recent NXTcomm tradeshow in Las Vegas, Microsoft
announced six new additions to the partner ecosystem of its Mediaroom
IPTV platform:

• HP, Tech Mahindra and 180Squared have signed on as systems
  integration partners, joining existing Mediaroom systems integration
  partner, Alcatel-Lucent. According to Microsoft, the three companies
  have completed a Mediaroom training and market-readiness program
  that qualifies them to offer deployment services to new and existing
  customers of the platform. Microsoft claims that the addition of the
  three systems integrators to the Mediaroom ecosystem is in response to