The strategic agreement was reached under the Liberate PopTV TM Program, in which Jacobs Rimell is the first Service Provisioning Operations Support System (OSS) infrastructure partner.
The companies have integrated their respective technologies — Jacobs Rimell’s APSTM software product and the Liberate TV PlatformTM software – to support the general provisioning and self-provisioning of advanced ITV services delivered by Liberate network operator customers.
Provisioning allows network operators to give access to and manage Liberate-enabled interactive services on a per subscriber basis, while self-provisioning lets subscribers order and activate interactive services directly through their own TV. This capability lets digital television network operators create business models and revenue streams based on actual consumer use of services such as e-mail, video-on-demand, and subscription games.
Working together with Jacobs Rimell, we are able to reduce complexity and speed the deployment process for both existing and new joint customers, which makes this offering a highly-compelling business opportunity, said David Limp, executive vice president and chief strategy officer, Liberate Technologies.
Jacobs Rimell started working with Liberate and its network-operator customers in 1999, providing the provisioning services for the deployment of Liberate ITV services at two of the largest cable operators in Europe, passing more than 4 million households.
We have focused from the outset on supporting the self-provisioning of Liberate-based ITV services, combined with full integration with cable network infrastructure and PC-based broadband IP products, said Henry Barton, CTO Broadband at Jacobs Rimell. This can significantly reduce the cost and complexity of integrating with CRM and BSS systems, while allowing a much more customer-friendly approach to service bundling.
Jacobs Rimell has already integrated the Liberate TV Platform within its own broadband reference platform – demonstrating the self-provisioning of DOCSIS and EuroDOCSIS digital set-top boxes running the Liberate TV Navigator client software. With these platforms, Jacobs Rimell offers network operators a pre-integrated solution for their next-generation broadband environment. The integrated solution is independent of the network transport infrastructure and can be delivered with either hybrid fiber coax (HFC) or digital subscriber line (DSL) transport networks, as well as IP-streaming environments.
