Ericsson and Inspur Software Group have forged a multi-year strategic partnership to deliver innovative TV services at web speed to China, the largest pay TV market in the world.
The two partners will collaborate to develop a best-of-breed, cloud-enabled TV platform for operators in the burgeoning Chinese market using Ericsson's end-to-end MediaFirst solution suite.
Shandong Cable Network will be the first to deploy the new TV platform in China. The new service will deliver live and on-demand TV content to 20 million subscribers in 17 cities across the Shandong province.
As part of the agreement, Inspur will integrate Ericsson's end-to-end MediaFirst solution suite within its media portfolio. It will deploy Ericsson MediaFirst TV Platform on Inspur's advanced set top box and home gateway solution, and Ericsson MediaFirst Video Storage and Processing Platform (VSPP) on Inspur's market leading hardware solution.
In a separate announcement, Bridge Alliance has tapped Ericsson to deploy a unified content delivery network across 12 countries in Asia Pacific. The Unified Delivery Network (UDN) connects content providers all over the world with the last mile reach of network operators.
This new partnership enables collaboration between content providers and Bridge Alliance members, offering them a unique opportunity to play a significant role in the content delivery value chain.
Also, Ericsson launched its content discovery ecosystem at NAB Show 2017. Through its network of partners, the ecosystem will bring together a range of TV and movie data sources as well as a suite of software services that help understand and act on the data.
Broadcasters, content owners and service providers will have access to an extensive universe of rich TV and movie data sets including images and poster art, clips and trailers, ratings, cast and crew information, series and episodic data and much more.
Launch partners include ColorTV, Internet Video Archive, and XroadMedia.