Orange Selects Harmonic for Combined IPTV and OTT Delivery Services

Orange, one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators, has upgraded its IPTV and OTT video delivery architecture with a Harmonic live encoding and transcoding platform. At the heart of the workflow is Harmonic’s Electra™ software-based system, which offers Orange a unified solution for both IPTV and OTT delivery to approximately 6.6 million subscribers in France, streamlining operations and providing the operator with the flexibility to reuse system capacity as its needs evolve over time. Using Harmonic’s video delivery solution, Orange is able to provide its subscribers a wide channel offering, including 160 SD and 30 HD channels for OTT and 126 SD and 40 HD channels for IPTV.

Pay-TV operators will generate USD 7 billion from distributing live, linear OTT services in mature markets by 2021, according to ABI Research, compared with just over USD 1 billion in 2016. Using Harmonic’s Electra™ convergent workflows, Orange can grow its OTT revenues while still powering its traditional IPTV business. By supporting next-generation codecs like HEVC and offering clustering capabilities, Harmonic’s solutions will also enable Orange to deliver higher video resolution in the future, up to UHD HDR, at low bit rates.