Month: April 2020

BTC, Bulgaria’s incumbent telecoms company, which operates under the brand Vivacom, will soon launch a trio of services.

However, according to Dnevnik, it will include Internet access, landline and mobile phones, not television.

BTC has identified the launch of best IPTV as part of its agenda, although only a small portion of its existing network is technically capable of providing services.

While Bulgaria has private IPTV services, the most famous of which is run by Vestitel, another telecoms company, it is one of the few countries in central and eastern Europe where incumbents have not yet launched.

Romania’s Romtelecom is looking to neighbouring Greece to launch its long-awaited IPTV service.

ZF reports that the telecoms company may use the same technical solution as its parent company OTE, which plans to offer IPTV to Greek users with Internet access speeds as low as 2m/s.

Currently, OTE’s connn-x TV offers more than 35 TV channels and VOD for 15 euros a month, and users can surf the Internet at 8 or 24 megabits per second.

Adopting the technology will make Romtelecom’s IPTV service, which is likely to be launched for the first time before the end of the year, more affordable for users who currently charge 4.90 euros per month for 2mbps Internet access and 14.1 euros per month for 8mbps Internet access.

Six HBO channels will be available on all three smart IPTV service platforms in the Netherlands: KPN Interactive TV, XS4All and Telfort.

Three SD and three hd channels, HBO, HBO 2 and HBO 3, will launch on KPN and XS4All on June 25, while Telfort will begin airing these channels on July 9.

HBO customers also have access to HBO Go and HBO on-demand services.

HBO in the Netherlands is a joint venture between time warner and Ziggo, the Dutch cable operator. The channel was launched on the Ziggo network earlier this year and is the first shipping agreement with another platform.

IPTV has proved slow to develop in Ukraine, where the number of households receiving services legally is estimated to be no more than 150,000.

This figure, provided by IPNET CEO Dmitry Grischuk and quoted by Mediasat, is equivalent to just 2% of all broadband users.

However, the true figure is likely to be lower as the market is still in its very early stages.

Only a few companies offer legal IPTV services.

In addition to IPNET, they include TeNe T and Trinity in Odessa and mariupol, respectively.