IZZI to launch 100 Mbps internet in April

IZZI, the Latvian cable TV, internet and telephony services provider will start offering its customers 100 Mbps internet speeds in early April, according to Helmut Kohl of IZZI's owner Contaq Latvian Cable.
The company will use DOCSIS 3.0 technology to deliver this speed over existing cables as well as some direct optical connections. The internet access will be independent of and unaffected by watching cable TV or digital cable TV over the same connection.
Kohl hinted that once the high speed network was running successfully for a while, it would be possible to offer what amounts to a service level agreement (SLA) for private customers and small businesses. SLAs often specify that data throughput speeds will not fall below a certain level and IZZI is hoping to make such guarantees at a future date.
IZZI business development director Sandra Kraujiņa said in a Latvian-language video interview that IZZI will expand its own subscriber bas to 126 000 by the end of 2009 and aggressively look for acquisitions on the Latvian cable TV market (it has already bought six smaller operators last year). She said the purpose was to take the largest market share in Latvia, unseating Baltkom TV, which claims the leading spot today.
IZZI officials said the company had a "double digit millions of LVL" war chest for this purpose, but did not disclose the precise sum. This money will be spend in addition to extensive investment in upgrading and consolidating its network. In a Latvian-language video interview, Kraujiņa invited small and regional operators who wanted to sell their business to come to IZZI.
The company also announced that it was implementing a two-year long program of discounts for triple-play services (telephony, internet and cable TV service) for pensioners, the unemployed, students and the parents of newborns. While pensioners are unlikely to change their status, Kohl said that he was counting on other groups (persons finding employment, students completing their studies and going to work) to apply their discounts on a "fair use"basis.

Latvia's IZZI promises 100 Mbps internet in 2009

IZZI, the Latvian cable television, internet and voice services provider, will be able to offer 100 Mbps internet speeds to its cable customers during 2009, according to Helmut Kohl, a representative of Contaq Latvian Cable, the company's new owner (a consortium of four investment funds).
Kohl said the planned upgrade of IZZI's cable network means it will decisively beat Lattelecom's DSL offering, which presently tops at 10 Mbps. Short of a major and expensive replacement of the entire copper-based infrastructure, coaxial cable linked to IZZI's fiber optic network in certain urban areas will be the fastest internet service in Latvia, he said. Such speeds can only be exceeded by upgrading to fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), which is being implemented on a very small scale in Latvia by Latvenergo and Lattelecom.
Kohl also said that IZZI was planning to participate in a forthcoming tender to provide digital terrestrial TV broadcast services to reach some 400 000 viewers in areas outside Latvia's larger cities where broadcast TV is the only service presently available.
Kohl said that if IZZI were awarded the deal, it had the money, know-how and other resources to start digital broadcasting within one year of the award. The digital TV tender is expected in November. The Contaq executive said that around 80 % of the necessary hardware and software resources needed for digital terrestrial broadcasting already existed to serve IZZI's digital cable TV network.
Kohl also said that IZZI hoped to expand its high-definition offerings on digital cable (currently limited to VOOM, an English language HD channel and an HD channel in Russian) next year and offer HD terrestrial broadcasts if given the chance. He cautioned, however, that there were no local HD offerings and those available in Europe in major languages were in English or German.
Commenting on possible competition between cable and IPTV, Kohl noted that some of the investors in the consortium behind the recent buy-out of IZZI (from Latvian stakeholders) were invested in IPTV.
Kohl sees IPTV as an outlet for specialized content and narrow audiences, citing a golf channel as an example, while more mainstream programming would be supplied on cable. The Contaq spokesman said he was not concerned that Lattelecom was offering timeshifted programming, since this was mainly locally produced, whereas timeshifting content such as feature films using the operator's platform was "a gray legal area" that could not be compared to recording shows on hard disk or tape while absent from home.