Is KPN planning its own version of UPC's Horizon box?

Friday 12 November 2010 | 13:15 CET

Nokia Siemens Networks has presented a new IPTV system, the Ubiquity Multiscreen TV Platform. Belgacom will be the first customer to use the platform, and shortly thereafter another important IPTV customers was added, KPN. NSN is currently demostrating the 'end-to-end solution' at a conference in the US.

The platform offers a broad range of advantages for consumers, and NSN highlighted a number of standards it expects to form part of TV 2.0:

• integrated web content,
• consumption on any given screen (with session continuity, allowing resumption of a programme on your smartphone after watching part of it at home on the TV),
• added recommendations engine (recommendations based on previously viewed content),
• an app store (on-screen widgets) for access to servces such as Facebook, Twitter and Picasa,
• t-commerce possibilities (one-click impulse buying).

NSN of course names a number of advantages for its operator customers:
• simple (back office and management system integration),
• cheap (the client was developed on the open source Qt platform for applications and the user interface),
• compete with (free) over-the-top content,
• more consumer use as a result of an expanded offering and access via multiple devices, allowing monetisation of more content.

KPN has been remarkably quiet on the contract (to 2012) with NSN, which adds the new platform to its existing IPTV services. Liberty Global has been talking already since the end of 2009 about its upcoming set-top box (the Horizon) with OTT services delivered to the 'connected TV'. Belgacom expects to start in 2011, and that may be the case for KPN as well. That means it looks like both UPC and KPN will introduce a hybrid set-top box in 2011. The question is then what will Ziggo do and of course all the other triple-play providers. Development time for this type of new system is relatively long (in years), meaning UPC and KPN could have a significant time-to-market advantage - assuming the development doesn't stagnate.