Streaming21, Inc., a leader in broadcast-quality media streaming solutions, today announced that the company has achieved significant growth in its Karaoke On Demand initiative for Chunghwa Telecom (TAIEX: 2412, NYSE: CHT). Chunghwa Telecom is the incumbent carrier in Taiwan that owns 95% access networks and 4 million broadband subscribers. CHT is also one of the world’s largest IPTV service operators with over 120,000 subscribers. In October 2005, Streaming21 deployed the world’s first commercial residential “Karaoke On Demand” service for the IPTV platform at Chunghwa Telecom. This service attracted approximately 50,000 active subscribers and reached over hundreds of thousand monthly average hits in the first 3 month time of deployment. In April 2006, the KOD users jumped to 40 percent of CHT’s total IPTV users. At its recent growth rate, KOD subscriber penetration should break at least 50 percent by the second quarter of 2006. KOD will be the major revenue-generation application for CHT’s IPTV services.
“Thanks to the popularity of our ‘Karaoke On Demand’ service powered by Streaming21, we are currently experiencing significant IPTV subscriber growth. The success of this service puts us in an excellent position to capitalize on this industry trend,” said Yifong Chang, Managing Director of Multimedia Dept. in Chunghwa Telecom Northern Division. He added, “iTV is another valuable addition to our growing portfolio of IPTV businesses. We believe that iTV has enormous potential to lead the market with high business values. We are looking forward to working with Streaming21 to create more growing phenomena of IPTV services together.”
“IPTV is the new frontier for telecom operators. All Telcos & broadband operators are expecting big payoffs from IPTV to justify their significant investments and capitalize on the IPTV market opportunity. CHT’s “Karaoke On Demand” service represents one of the most exciting and successful stories in Asia’s IPTV market, and serves as a great role model for other operators that expect to generate new revenue streams from IPTV services,” said Dr. Joe Lin, President and CEO of Streaming21.
Streaming21’s end-to-end interactive KOD solutions with customizable features are able to accommodate hundreds of thousand karaoke music titles with carrier-class stability. Intuitive EPG, unique interactive features, convenient on-line payment and powerful service management system offer immediate adoption of new home entertainment services. This innovative solution enables new opportunities for broadband operators to deliver differentiated & compelling home entertainment services that will generate profitable revenue streams and significantly reduce subscriber churn. More interactivity features & services can be easily integrated into interactive TV experience such as online karaoke contests, on-line voting and many more. Karaoke is an extremely popular form of entertainment in Asia. Streaming21 realizes a dream of delivering Asia’s most popular entertainment directly to the living rooms. KOD has now become one of the hottest home entertainments in Asia.
Streaming21 has led numerous IPTV services for incumbent telecom operators in a number of countries around the world such as US, Italy, Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, and more. The company has assisted many Telcos & broadband operators to create personalized IPTV services across IP and 3G networks that help to provide long-term differentiation from competitive offerings. As the digital home entertainment market continues to accelerate, Streaming21 is anticipating creating new business models with its partners and customers. Currently, there are over 20 Telcos & broadband service providers adopting Streaming21’s award-winning solutions and professional services worldwide.
About Streaming21
Streaming21’s broadcast and media-on-demand software solutions deliver broadcast-quality video and audio over IP networks. Streaming21 is recognized as the “winner of 2005 Red Herring Asia Top 100 companies” recently. Built upon a revolutionary architecture, for which nine patents have been filed. Streaming21’s solution enables the deployment of rich-media services with carrier-class scalability, 24/7 operations, and broadcast-quality delivery. The solution uses open standard hardware to lower the total cost of the solution and its software is optimized to support more users and media files with fewer servers as well as less storage, and personnel. The platform is open and flexible to readily integrate value-added services. To learn more about Streaming21’s solutions and industry leading partners, please call +886-2-2500-0680 or visit www.streaming21.com.
About Chunghwa Telecom
Chunghwa Telecom (TAIEX:2412, NYSE: CHT) is the leading telecom service provider in Taiwan. CHT completed its corporatization on 1 July 1996 under the direction of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications according to the Telecommunication Act and Memorandum of Chunghwa Telecom Corporation. CHT also completed its privatization process in August 2005. Incorporated with a registered capital at NT$96.477 billion, CHT chiefly provides telecommunication and information-related services. Its scope of services covers city call, long-distance calls, international calls, GSM, data communication, Internet services, broadband networking, satellite communication, intelligent network, mobile data and multimedia broadband. As the most experienced and largest integrated telecommunication operator in Taiwan, CHT is one of the most important partners for international telecommunication cooperation, with distinctive achievements in promoting global real-time communication, improvement social life, and enhancing economic efficiency. To learn more about CHT, please visit www.cht.com.tw.