Bharti Selects TANDBERG Television MPEG-4 AVC IP Head-End for Indian DTH Satellite Launch.

Deploys Advanced Technologies to Create World Leading DTH Infrastructure

SOUTHAMPTON, England -- TANDBERG Television, part of the Ericsson Group, today announced that Bharti Telemedia, a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel Ltd., has chosen its market-leading advanced IP head-end for the launch of a new Direct to Home (DTH) satellite TV service in India. Bharti Telemedia's state-of-the-art DTH system will use a range of TANDBERG Television's proven solutions including the iSIS 8000 IP head-end and MPEG-4 AVC standard definition encoders. The system is one of the first satellite DTH platforms in the world to benefit from the compression efficiencies of standard definition MPEG-4 AVC, significantly increasing transponder capacity and potentially doubling the amount of available channels.

"We are excited to be deploying such advanced technology and infrastructure to offer a best-in-class DTH service to our customers. To launch this service we needed more than a technology supplier, we looked for a television partner. TANDBERG Television was a clear choice as the company brings a strong combination of market-leading IP and MPEG-4 AVC technology, coupled with more than a decade of experience of enabling some of the world's largest DTH satellite operations," says N Arjun, Executive Director, Bharti Telemedia.

The DTH services will be launched nationally across India and Bharti is setting up a state-of-the-art infrastructure near Gurgaon (Haryana) for the purpose of uplinking and broadcast. By using the latest MPEG-4 AVC video compression, and IP technologies, Bharti can cost-effectively deliver more channels in less bandwidth, while still maintaining high quality pictures.

"We are proud to have been selected to provide the video head-end infrastructure for such a prestigious project. The launch of Bharti's DTH services will add tremendously to the operator's existing bouquet of integrated communications. By using our state-of-the-art IP and advanced compression technologies Bharti is able to deploy a world-class, future-proofed infrastructure that will enable it to deliver a high quality customer experience that can scale, cost- efficiently as the service grows," says Roger Bolton, Executive VP of Compression Solutions at TANDBERG Television.

Advanced IP infrastructure

At the heart of the Bharti head-end is the TANDBERG iSIS 8000 which includes best-in-class video encoding, IP multiplexing and new receiver/decoders. The system is brought together under a single control and management system, nCompass. The TANDBERG MX8400 IP Multiplexer, is a next generation DVB-S2 ready solution which will provide Bharti with an open standards, IP based head-end with support for up to 4 independent multiplexed outputs from a single unit. The combination of Reflex statistical multiplexing and this advanced multiplexing architecture ensures maximum usage of available bit-rate.

Further bandwidth efficiencies are achieved by the use of the TANDBERG EN8030 MPEG-4 AVC SD encoders, based on the company's next-generation compression platform. The TANDBERG EN8030 use a comprehensive tool-set of advanced compression video processing features, combined with new pre-processing techniques. Itdelivers the industry's leading picture quality versus performance through bandwidth improvements of up to 50% over traditional MPEG-2 based DTH services.

About TANDBERG Television

TANDBERG Television, part of the Ericsson Group, delivers the multimedia technology and expertise that is moving digital video forward. Whether it's advanced compression systems, on-demand or interactive television, the company's award-winning solutions are used by the world's leading network operators, broadcasters and content owners to deliver new viewer experiences and advertising opportunities. With a broad suite of open, standards-based products, TANDBERG Television offers the highest quality digital TV solutions including IPTV, HDTV, mobile TV, video-on-demand, advertising on-demand, and interactive TV applications. For more information, please visit www.tandbergtv.com.