Vodafone Portugal to host Group's centre for TV development

Vodafone Portugal to host Vodafone Group’s Competence Centre for TV development

Vodafone Portugal has been selected by the Vodafone Group to host the Competence Centre for the development and management of Next Generation Television. Known as TV Hub, this Centre will be the innovation laboratory creating the Television of the Future for the various markets where the Group operates.

Located at the head office of Vodafone Portugal in Lisbon, the TV Hub was opened today, 10 October, by the Secretary of State for Infrastructure, Guilherme W. d’Oliveira Martins, at a ceremony attended by the CEO of Vodafone Portugal, Mário Vaz, Luis Lopes, Unified Communications Director of the Vodafone Group, and other executives of the Company.

“The award of the TV Hub to Vodafone Portugal demonstrates not only the commitment and confidence of the shareholder in our market, but also recognises the Company’s technological leadership and execution capability and attests to the quality of Portuguese personnel and infrastructure. By attracting the third Competence Centre to Portugal, Vodafone Portugal is showing that it is unquestionably a beacon of excellence in the Group and is enhancing its contribution to wealth creation in Portugal”, said Mário Vaz, CEO of Vodafone Portugal.

The Competence Centre involves 80 engineers from Portugal with highly specialised expertise, working closely with a team of over 100 multidisciplinary personnel drawn from the Group to develop the Vodafone TV solution.

This solution, which employs next generation technology and is supported on state-of-the-art platforms, is being designed for implementation in multiple geographies, with the key feature of being adaptable to meet the specific requirements of each market and the needs of customers as users of the television service.

The structure of the Competence Centre for the development of Next Generation Television – TV Hub – consists of four key areas:

• Product – Analysis of the needs of each country, negotiation of the implementation of the Vodafone TV solution and composition of the product.
• Development – Design of the solution tailored to the requirements of each market and coordination of the development of solutions with the various partners;
• Engineering – Implementation of the solution in the various countries;
• Operations – Monitoring of the various operations.

Vodafone’s TV offer is already a reality in eight of the Group’s markets – Portugal, Spain, Romania, Ireland, Greece, Germany, the Netherlands and New Zealand, with the teams responsible now working on the development of this solution for further geographies.

The total number of potential users of this innovative television service is currently 500 million consumers, equivalent to the population of the entire European Union. The Company’s objective is to consolidate the international presence of Vodafone TV, extending the offer to other operations of the Group, which is currently present in 17 countries with a fixed broadband service and in 26 with a mobile service.

“We are convinced that this Centre is a further example of the successful strategy implemented by Vodafone Portugal. We are today a global communications operator, the leader in customer orientation and satisfaction, innovation and brand image. We are the fastest growing operator in terms of pay-TV customers over eleven consecutive quarters. We are a company ready to respond positively to the challenges of the future, nationally and internationally. For all these reasons, this project inspires us to uphold our ambition to be the most admired operator in Portugal and a beacon of excellence in the ‘Vodafone World’, the CEO of Vodafone Portugal added.

Vodafone TV

Vodafone’s Next Generation Television incorporates world-beating, pioneering features and services, reinforcing the Company’s commitment to provide the best service and the most complete communications experience.

Designed with an innovative but simple and intuitive interface, Vodafone TV raises the potential of multiscreen to another level: full convergence of services across platforms. It allows access to the service anywhere, either through the TV box or a PC, tablet, smartphone, smartwatch or portable projector, with superior quality.

Among the many features available are the ability to watch television programmes from the last seven days (Catch-up TV); the availability of thousands of premium films, series and documentaries, from the latest premieres to the classics (Video on Demand Store); recording content in the cloud allows access anytime, anywhere, from any device; an exclusive area that automatically saves references to programmes watched or to be followed (MyTV); and the ability to view live on Vodafone TV all the videos captured on your smartphone, tablet or GoPro camera (Live on TV).

Personalising of the TV experience, allowing customers to quickly find content of interest, is included in the Vodafone TV offer through optimisation of recommendations and the possibility of advanced exploration of content.

Vodafone is also planning to establish partnerships with key industry players in order to bring the best content to all its customers. An example of this is the exclusive partnership with Netflix, through which customers have access to original productions such as “Narcos”, “Orange is the New Black” and “Marco Polo”.

Vodafone Portugal Competence Centres

TV Hub is the third Vodafone Group Competence Centre hosted by Vodafone Portugal, following the Atlantic NOC (Network Operations Centre) and the Centre for development of IoT (Internet of Things) solutions. In total, these three areas employ 450 highly specialised staff in Portugal.