AXIAN partners with Zattoo to bring IPTV, OTT to Madagascar
Details
Faye Sutton
| 13 December 2021
Zattoo has signed a deal with the AXIAN Group, in which Telma, an AXIAN subsidiary, and the biggest telco in the Indian Ocean, is using Zattoo’s TV-as-a-Service to offer a set-top box and app-based IPTV and OTT services in Madagascar.

zattooTelma has more than five million subscribers in Madagascar and Comoros, and was looking to further strengthen its position as the leading telecoms provider in Madagascar with TV services made available to both fixed-line and mobile-only subscribers. As part of the project, AXIAN wanted an end-to-end TV platform partner whom it could trust with launching its first-ever TV service for customers, fully remotely and within a short period of time.

Bertrand Lacroix, CCO of Telma, said: “From the outset, Zattoo proved it had the technical capabilities and expertise to help us achieve our ambitious goal of launching a fully-fledged IPTV service within five months in the middle of a global pandemic. Zattoo delivered on that promise. Its highly experienced team worked closely with the Telma team and proved to be flexible enough to cater to specialised requirements of French-speaking Africa and local markets, in the facilitation of mobile-based subscriptions. The greatest bonus of all is that customer registrations for the TV service are already many times higher than our initial projections.”

Telma’s new TV service comes with nPVR, seven-day catch up and instant restart. All of this is enabled through Zattoo-developed white label applications for web, mobile devices (Android Mobile & iOS), Chromecast and a Telma-branded Android TV Operator Tier set-top box. Telma is approved by Google to use Android TV for this purpose, which is still unique for the African TV market.

To underpin the more prevalent viewing platforms in Africa, Zattoo also worked with Telma to facilitate daily and monthly-pass options designed for the take-up and streaming of TV channels on mobile devices. Other than Zattoo's pre-configured local caching servers, Telma did not need to deploy any dedicated hardware or software. The entire service is hosted and managed by Zattoo via datacentres in Zürich, Frankfurt and Paris.

Niklas Brambring, CEO of Zattoo, said: “We are delighted to have successfully secured and launched our first implementation in Africa with Telma and the AXIAN Group. Time and again, we have proven that the Zattoo TV Platform is up to the task of providing a leading telco with a platform and the support to launch a state-of-the-art, multi-featured TV service to its end customers.”