Press Release

Irdeto To Protect ALA TV Media Content And Deliver Pay TV Services To Krygyzstan

Kyrgyzstan's first pay TV service uses Irdeto Conditional Access System to secure multiple types of content against unauthorised access

AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands — 03 September 2009 — Irdeto, the leading expert in multimedia content and business model protection solutions and services, today announced Ala TV, Kyrgyzstan's first digital cable pay TV operator, has selected the company’s Conditional Access System (CAS) to provide vital content protection and support for its inaugural digital TV service offering.

Pay TV revenues in developing markets like the Eastern Europe/CIS region are particularly vulnerable to content piracy.  Without the implementation of effective Conditional Access systems in this region, piracy-related losses could spike nearly 37 percent yearly, according to Datamonitor.  As a regional pioneer in the pay TV market, Ala TV selected Irdeto's CAS to provide a high level of protection against the theft of content that will ultimately yield a wide range of revenue- and royalty-generating services to help enhance and grow its business model.

“Since we are the first mover in the pay TV market in Kyrgyzstan, we needed a strong, experienced partner with proven technology to lay a solid foundation of subscribers and allow us the ability to provide advanced services offerings in the future,” said Vassiliy Goncharov, general director of Ala TV.  “After an extensive review, we chose Irdeto because of their superior product, high level of customer support and strong recommendations from other operators in the region.”

The Conditional Access market is growing at a marked pace thanks in part to demand for the technology in markets outside North America.  In Russia and Ukraine alone, Datamonitor projects subscribers to digital pay-TV services to increase 28 percent annually to 8.7 million households by 2012.

“We are seeing an influx of innovative CA broadcast deployments taking place in the CIS region and this is becoming a key growth market for our organisation,” said Graham Kill, CEO of Irdeto.  “We have already carried out a number of successful deployments in neighbouring Kazakhstan and are eager to work with a progressive firm like Ala TV.  This partnership signifies our increasing involvement in helping organisations in young markets protect content at every point in their development.”

In addition to Irdeto's CAS for multiple content types, the deployment will also include Irdeto's latest head-end device. The CAS solution will fully integrate with Changhong set-top boxes and Scopus, the acting head-end vendor.  Ala TV operates with Multichannel Multipoint Distribution Service (MMDS), a wireless telecommunications technology used for general-purpose broadband networking and as an alternative method of cable television programming reception.

About Ala TV

For more than a decade, Ala TV LLC has been providing local residents in and around Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan with pay tv cable network services and programming via cable network as well as MMDS transmissions. By the end of 1999, Ala TV completed MMDS transmitter installation and launched an encrypting system, TOCOM, bringing cable services to a 30 kilometer radius from the transmitter. Currently, 80,000 households are serviced by Ala TV’s cable network serves in addition to the 1,500 household MMDS subscriptions. For more information, please visit http://www.alatv.kg/.

About Irdeto

Irdeto empowers companies to protect and monetize their digital assets and maximize return on content with innovative and reliable software technologies, content management and distribution solutions and end-to-end solutions and services.  The company’s products include conditional access, digital rights management, business support systems and set-top box software solutions. Through group company Cloakware, it provides software and datacenter security solutions, More than 500 customers worldwide trust Irdeto to secure and enable the delivery of their valuable content across digital broadcast, IP, mobile, enterprise and government networks. Irdeto solutions currently enable simple to advanced business models on more than one billion devices and applications.

Founded in 1969, Irdeto employs over 900 people in 25 offices across the globe, including the dual corporate headquarters in Amsterdam and Beijing. The company is a subsidiary of multinational media group Naspers (JSE: NPN), which includes a wide range of pay TV, Internet, instant-messaging, technology and publishing businesses.  For more information, please visit http://www.irdeto.com/.

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