Zenterio migrates legacy STBs for OTE in Greece

Zenterio migrates first 85,000 legacy set-top boxes to Zenterio OS for OTE in Greece

STOCKHOLM — Zenterio, a leader in the provision of pay TV client solutions, today announced that it has completed the migration to Zenterio OS of the first 85,000 legacy set-top boxes for COSMOTE TV, OTE Group’s pay TV platform.

COSMOTE TV began delivering set-top boxes based on Zenterio OS, in 2015. The service, re-branded as COSMOTE TV in November 2016, is available over both satellite and IP networks, and now has more than 503,000 subscribers across Greece.

In 2016, COSMOTE TV introduced its hybrid service, becoming the first operator in Greece to combine broadcast television with content delivered over the Internet. COSMOTE TV hybrid subscribers gained access to movies and TV series on-demand plus catch-up TV all delivered through their set-top boxes. OTE and Zenterio worked together to enable these features on the COSMOTE TV platform, with Zenterio developing the required updates to the user interface as well as providing the box operating system. In addition, Zenterio acted as the primary system integrator for the project. Around 300,000 of the company’s subscribers are already enabled to take advantage of the IP-enabled features.

The upgrade of the old boxes began at the end of 2016 on a customer opt-in basis, and has now passed the 85,000 mark, demonstrating the quality and reliability of the software developed by Zenterio. The remaining legacy subscribers will be converted over the next few months.

These developments are part of Zenterio’s partnership with OTE. Zenterio is OTE’s TV client software partner, and the companies are working together on the next generation of COSMOTE TV innovations. OTE has already announced that it will offer multi-room TV later this year, and other exciting developments are in the pipeline.

“We congratulate OTE on their successful deployment. OTE’s rollout is a clear demonstration of the advantages of separating hardware and software in terms of cost optimization, consistent branding and future proofing”, said Jörgen Nilsson, CEO of Zenterio.

Set-top box migration is becoming increasingly commonplace as operators reconfigure their service profiles to take advantage of the opportunities that broadband connectivity allows. Zenterio is at the forefront of this trend having implemented migrations at pay TV operators across the world, with OTE being the latest example.