(13 January 2006 3:00 pm)

MUMBAI: UTStarcom, the US-based firm offering IP-based, end-to-end networking and telecommunications solutions has resorted to a re-branding exercise for its 15-month old IPTV system mVision. The system has been re-named as RollingStream.

"We believe the rebranding of our field-proven IPTV solution to RollingStream better articulates the function of UTStarcom's IPTV product family to enable service providers to offer their subscribers a variety of streaming applications over a single platform," says UTStarcom VP, worldwide vice president Brian Caskey. "The name RollingStream speaks to what differentiates our technology, the ability to efficiently parcel content segments to servers at the edge of the network and then deliver the segments sequentially to users on demand; so that their experience rivals watching a DVD."

RollingStream is a distributed end-to-end solution that is designed to enable telecommunications operators and broadband service providers to deliver broadcast-quality television and on-demand entertainment programming over IP networks. The solution's scalability, reliability, and bandwidth efficiency allow it to support new services, including broadcast TV, Network Personal Video Recorder (n-PVR), Video on Demand (VoD), and Near Video on Demand (NVoD), over existing network infrastructures. These services may give service providers opportunities to increase revenues, offer new services, and improve customer satisfaction and retention, states an official release.

RollingStream partitions each program into segments that are cached on network edge servers based on viewing demand patterns and operator-specified policies. This mechanism allows service providers to store the beginning segments of feature-length programs directly at the network edge, close to the subscriber, and dynamically deliver the remaining segments once viewing starts. Compared to IPTV solutions that store all content either at the core, which results in network congestion, or in multiple complete iterations at the edge, which requires huge amounts of storage, UTStarcom's approach simplifies and expedites content delivery, reduces storage requirements, and minimizes network congestion, the release adds.