Alcatel-Lucent announced that it has been chosen by Orcon, the fastest growing service provider in New Zealand, to improve on the delivery and experience of Internet-based video to its customers.

Alcatel-Lucent will deploy its next-generation, Velocix Digital Media Delivery Platform in key centres across the country, so that Orcon can offer a faster and more efficient connection to its broadband users across multiple networks and devices. The Velocix platform will enable Orcon to cost-effectively meet the fast-growing demand for online video, besides opening up new revenue opportunities for the company.

“As video-on-demand and streaming TV web sites grow in popularity, the number of videos being watched by the broadband users is also increasing,” said Charlie Boyd, Head of Wholesale at Orcon. “By leveraging Alcatel-Lucent’s Velocix infrastructure, we can offer content providers a local content delivery network (CDN) solution that meets their specific requirements, with the assurance that the technology and services have already been tested by other telecom companies  and broadcasters around the world,” he says.

Jyoti Mahurkar-Thombre, Head of Alcatel-Lucent’s New Zealand operations said: “We are witnessing an explosion in data traffic over both fixed and mobile networks. As New Zealand moves towards a fibre-based ultra-fast broadband future, the exponential growth in online video will only continue.”

Paul Larbey, general manager of Velocix said: “Our aim is to work with Orcon to develop a high leverage network that can handle the extra demand efficiently while at the same time, creating the potential for new revenues by exposing the assets within the network in a secure way.”

The Velocix platform is a key element of Alcatel-Lucent’s High Leverage Network architecture – a fully converged, scalable, next generation, all-IP multiservice infrastructure – that enables operators to deliver traffic more reliably, efficiently and at the lowest cost, while also leveraging the network to generate revenue from sophisticated managed services and applications.