September 16, 2004 Santa Clara, CA -- Minerva Networks has announced that Utopia (Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency), the largest municipal fiber-to-the-premise (FTTP) project in the country, has placed an initial order for its iTVManager service management platform to offer advanced video services to subscribers in fourteen Utah cities.
The services will include interactive television, Video-on-Demand (VOD), and eventually broadcast-quality video telephony and "always-on" video monitoring. Video monitoring will allow elderly and disabled people, who wish to live independently, to be constantly monitored by caregivers.
The new service will be first made available to 50,000 households in the cities of Murray, West Valley City, and Midvale in Salt Lake County; and Orem, Payson, and Lindon in Utah County. The broadcast television feeds for the UTOPIA network will be sourced via a fiber connection from the City of Provo's video headend, featuring Minerva encoding technology.
"UTOPIA's subscribers will experience advanced services and the finest video quality," reports Jean-Georges Fritsch, Minerva's chief operating officer. "The Minerva headend at Provo will provide over 250 local and national channels along with educational and community content from the city of Provo, Brigham Young University, and Utah Valley State College."
The project is expected to take three years to build at an estimated cost of $300 million. The network will utilize a patent-pending Open Service Provider Network (OSPN) model, developed by DynamicCity Inc., who assisted in arranging the financing and is managing the construction as well as the operations of the network. The OSPN model keeps network ownership separate from the service providers, enabling several competing service providers to simultaneously offer Triple Play services.
"Minerva iTVManager supports the OSPN model and provides superior performance, scalability, and ease of use enabling service providers to equitably compete with their enhanced video services," contends Jeff Fishburn, DynamicCity's chief technology officer. "The result is a unique interactive television experience for the end-users."
"People want to watch programming when they want, take advantage of new educational opportunities, share family pictures and videos," adds Paul Morris, UTOPIA's executive director. "We're delighted to deploy the Minerva iTVManager platform, which can support the scale and breadth of services we envision offering. We appreciate the outstanding level of commitment and support Minerva has given to the project."