UTStarcom IPTV Contract With Bureau of Radio and Television in Santai County, Sichuan Province

Deployment in Sichuan Province to Aid Earthquake Recovery; Provide Interactive Streaming Media and Long-term Multimedia Entertainment Platform

ALAMEDA, Calif. — UTStarcom, Inc. (Nasdaq: UTSI) today announced a new customer deployment with the Bureau of Radio and Television of Santai County, Sichuan Province, a subsidiary of Beijing-based government agency SARFT, to resume their radio and television network capability following last year’s traumatic earthquake. The Bureau of Radio and Television of Santai County, Sichuan province is the project contractor.

UTStarcom will help resume radio and television networks in earthquake-stricken areas in Sichuan province via its end-to-end RollingStream® IPTV platform. Phase one of the deployment will cover 20,000 users, providing them with access to delivery channels, such as television and radio, for critical information. Upon completion, users will have access to ongoing rich and colorful TV programs, as well as a broad platform for communication.

“UTStarcom, with our interactive IPTV technology, is the ideal partner to support SARFT and help the local Sichuan province and other regions resume television and radio networks following last year’s major earthquake,” said Peter Blackmore, UTStarcom’s chief executive officer and president. “The IPTV RollingStream® platform will improve the technology and operation levels of Sichuan’s radio and television sector by transitioning from a simple, one-way network to a dual high-speed network. In the future, SARFT and UTStarcom could work together to make similar network enhancements in numerous other provinces.”

After facilitating the first-response phase of the deployment including an improved technology adaptation, the long-term goal is to provide a benchmark of interactive multimedia services for radio and television content providers to develop their dual, broadband and multiple-services operations. Once completed, the residents of Santai County in the Sichuan province will have access to rich television programming at their fingertips, provided by the RollingStream® platform which is able to simultaneously launch 7,000 video streams.

According to the contract, the deployment is scheduled to start in November 2009. The project will be carried out in every earthquake-hit area in the Sichuan province, though the applied technologies will vary. Some areas will apply the traditional one-way digital TV model, while others will use interactive streaming media technology.

Specifically, UTStarcom’s integrated solution will include five sets of Resilient Packet Ring (RPR) TN715 in an urban trunk network to constitute a 10G RPR, satisfying all data services of users. Additionally, five sets of BBS4000 Ethernet passive optical networks (EPON) and local area networks (LAN) will be deployed at the end user side with 1,200 sets of optical network units (ONU) at the first phase.