Western Illinois Video to deploy Tut’s Astria headend

Tut Systems announced today that Western Illinois Video, a cooperative of eight independent telcos, will deploy Tut’s Astria digital headend to provide video services and programming to the cooperative’s combined customer base of 10,000 subscribers.

WIV is one of half a dozen cooperatives that have deployed Tut’s solution. The individual members connect to the headend through a fiber ring and then tailor programming and advertising for their own networks. While some IOCs with as few as 1000 customers have deployed Tut’s head-end alone, many smaller carriers and cable providers have formed gigantic cooperatives of more that 100 members, said Craig Bender, vice president of marketing and corporate development for Tut.

"A lot of these companies have been Ma and Pa shops for the last 50 years," Bender said. "They can’t just build their own headend or a digital cable network."

Tut has specifically targeted the cooperative market with its technology. It provides a protocol and access agnostic technology, allowing individual carriers to connect to the video ring with ATM or IP technologies and ship to their customers over DSL, new fiber technologies or over the traditional cable plant, Bender said. Even IOCs that own their local cable franchises are finding it easier and cheaper to transmit video over DSL than to upgrade their cable networks, Bender added.

WIV’s members include Oneida Telephone, Viola Home Telephone, Woodhull Telephone, Mid-Century Telephone Cooperative, New Windsor Telephone Company, Reynolds Telephone Company, LeHarpe Telephone Company, and McDonough Telephone Cooperative. Tut has installed the headend and is not testing with six of the cooperatives members that are ready to launch by the end of third quarter. The remaining two plan to roll out service by the end of the year.

The WIV members will initially take a programming package of 125 channels of broadcast and pay-per-view, but WIV officials said they anticipate adding on-demand and interactive services in the future.