Switch off in Finland: Netgem and Saunalahti

First international deployment for Netgem
Finland prepares for analog TV switch-off with Saunalahti and Netgem

NEUILLY-SUR-SEINE — Netgem announces that its MPEG4 high definition set-top-boxes and middleware have been selected by Saunalahti Group Oyj for the launch of SaunaVisio, its triple play television service. This agreement is the first significant international success for the technologies and solutions that Netgem has successfully deployed in France, and demonstrates the ability of the Group to benefit from the emerging massive international deployments in IPTV.

Saunalahti Group Oyj is a part of Elisa Corporation, the second largest telecom operator in Finland with 513,000 broadband subscribers, 228,000 cable households and 2.5 million mobile customers. After having successfully introduced an online mobile offer in 2003 (500,000 subscribers in 6 months) and mobile TV in 2006, Saunalahti targets the analog switch-off in August 2007 to introduce an innovative TV service, combining DTT and on-demand Internet television services.

“We are very excited to work with Saunalahti, a company that has already proven its capability to launch innovative internet and mobile phone services and capture important market shares,” said Rémi Tereszkiewicz, VP Marketing & Business Development at Netgem.

“Deploying our hybrid technologies with such a partner is the ideal opportunity for us to start replicating abroad the expertise we have built in France, and demonstrate the quality and flexibility of our core technologies. ”

“With this offer, we will enable the Finnish households to benefit from an innovative television service, combining regular DTT and a on demand-content delivered via the Internet in TV quality”, added Turkka Koivu, Marketing Director at Saunalahti. “Thanks to the expertise of Netgem and the rich software environment they provided us with, we have been able to bring this service to the market in less than 3 months, on time before the analog switch-off”.