26.1.2010

Numericable/Altice selects the Teleste Luminato headend solution

Teleste has signed a contract with the French broadband cable operator Altice/Numericable on delivery of Luminato Headends featuring the latest digital terrestrial broadcasting features, such as stream redundancy, for the provision of terrestrial TV services also over cable distribution (COFDM, coded orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing).

The requested system was planned in close co-operation with the customer, which made it possible to utilise most out of Luminato headend features for real customer needs. The Luminato headends will be delivered to several different locations and each site will have two Luminatos; the first one to receive local digital terrestrial broadcasting (DVB-T) signals and the second one to modulate the requested channels as COFDM to cable network. Both Luminatos will also receive channels via a national IP backbone.

In France the analogue terrestrial broadcasting will be switched off in 2011 and replaced with digital (DVB-T). This Luminato headend configuration allows having IP signal through the national backbone together with local TV channel insertions in a very compact and automatic manner. Thanks to this system, Numericable is now also able to widen its selection of TV services to low-end set-top boxes and televisions.

Teleste was chosen because it was able to offer a future-proof Digital TV platform based on the newest Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) and IP-technology available. Long-term personal friendly relations with the Altice funders/owners and Teleste’s reputation as a well known and reliable supplier that offers world class products and solutions were also key factors in the decision. Local presence, high service quality and support, along with a perfect product fit, contributed to this deal as well.

Numericable/Altice is the leading cable broadband operator in France with 98% of the market share. It is also present in the Carribean, Belgium and Luxembourg markets, covering more than 10 million homes. Numericable offers video, digital and analogue, data and voice to 9.4 million homes in France. The company is the leader in the French market with its Optical Fibre network: there are over 4.1 million homes able to access 100 Mbits/s Internet and 152,000 customers already equipped. Numericable is the commercial name for Altice Group Cable activities in France and Benelux.