More Partners, Deployments for Mediaroom

Mediaroom, Microsoft’s technology platform for telephone providers to offer TV programming over IP networks (IPTV), has gained several new hardware and deployment partners, as well as new active deployments in India, Italy, and Russia. The agreements could help Microsoft build momentum for Mediaroom: after a slow start, deployments have doubled from 1 million to 2 million TV sets between January and June of 2008.

Recently signed agreements include the following:

• Corbina Telecom, which has more than 300,000 broadband customers in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union) and is building a fiber-optic network that connects to apartment buildings in Moscow and other cities, will roll out an IPTV service based on Mediaroom in mid-2008
• Reliance Communications, an Indian telecommunications provider with more than 1 million broadband access lines (the company does not publish subscriber numbers), will begin delivering a Mediaroom-based