South Dakota Telco Upgrades IPTV Middleware for New Market Entry

HERRIED, SD — With an impending expansion into a competitive market, Jeff Symens GM at Valley Telecommunications in Herried, South Dakota, knew an upgrade to their IPTV customer experience was necessary. While most rural video service providers only have to deal with DBS competition, Valley is faced with a savvy regional cable provider, and the switch to APMAX IPTV Middleware from Innovative Systems has positioned them to now have a service with advanced time shifted viewing features and apps.

Restart TV and Cloud DVR
The biggest upgrades first noticed by new and existing subscribers was Restart TV and Cloud DVR. Symens commented that benefits for the cDVR customer is protection of their recordings at the central office level. He also appreciates lower capex with utilization of standard STBs for program recording and no service call when adding cDVR to an existing customer's service.

Embedded Weather App
The new Weather App has been a differentiator giving their customers weather conditions, animated
radar and forecasts embedded in the program guide. The weather app eliminates the need for a
customer to leave their favorite channel and go to a weather channel if the weather starts to look bad in
their area.

Symens is pleased with adding a couple hundred new customers and attributes word of mouth about the customer experience as one of the factors. Symens says 200 new video customers may not seem like much, but for a small operator it is a real game changer.