IPTV Deployments Featured Article

MTG: Viasat to Sell Pay-TV Packages in Telia IPTV Network

By Raju Shanbhag, TMCnet Contributing Editor

Modern Times Group (MTG), an international entertainment broadcasting group, has announced that Viasat Broadcasting has signed a five year agreement with number one Swedish Telecommunications operator, Telia.

According to the agreement, Viasat can directly market its services to Telia´s broadband customer base. Representing approximately 90 percent of the total Swedish IPTV subscriber market, Telia has more than one million broadband customers and more than 300,000 IPTV (News - Alert) customers.

With this agreement, the customers of Telia´s Digital TV can access a total of 17 Viasat free-TV and pay-TV channels in six different Viasat channel packages (Viasat Silver, Viasat Gold, Viasat Sport, Viasat Film, Viasat Sport and Film and Viasat Golf). Viasat will directly market these packages to Telia´s customers.

: “This agreement is a significant milestone for us. Our core business is the aggregation and selling of packaged TV channel content, and this deal provides us with direct access to a new and large potential subscriber base,” said Hans-Holger Albrecht, president and CEO of MTG. “It reinforces our strategic focus on making our channels and packages as broadly available as possible on as many platforms as possible. It also emphasizes our customer commitment to enable TV viewers to watch what they want, when they want and where they want. The deal highlights our position as an independent pay-TV player, operating across multiple distribution channels, and the premium content provider of choice.”

Offering a mix of programs, the Viasat Gold and Silver packages the Viasat Sport 1, 2 and 3 channels, five TV1000 thematic movie channels, Viasat Explorer, Viasat History, Viasat Crime and Viasat Nature. The famous third party channels such as Disney channels, CNN, MTV and National Geographic Channel, which are already included in Viasat´s existing satellite DTH and IPTV offerings will also be included here. With more than 100 hours of on-demand programming from TV3, TV6, TV8 and ZTV, and programming from TV1000, subscribers will also have access to a catch-up TV service.

Raju Shanbhag is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit his columnist page

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