A few years ago NDS began opening local and regional sales offices near its emerging markets -- specifically in China, Spain, Korea and Australia. In February, Russia was added to this list when NDS opened an office in Moscow.

“We opened the Moscow office in recognition of the huge potential the Russian market has,” says Alan Dishington, NDS Director, Marketing EMEA. “We’ve just begun our work there.” Anastasia Sviridova, the local marketing and business representative, will initially run the office.

“At present our main focus is Moscow where there are seven pay-TV operators --almost all of which are small to medium size,” Dishington says. “VideoGuard Express™ is perfect for them because it is designed to help them launch digital pay-TV services quickly and easily.” VideoGuard Express is fundamentally based on NDS’ world leading VideoGuard conditional access, but also includes an integrated virtual machine-based EPG that the operator can customize, as well as fully integrated NDS MediaHighway middleware. This ensures that the platform can be upgraded to offer new functionality in the future via a simple software download.

“VideoGuard Express has been integrated into several different set top boxes and can be easily integrated with compression equipment, multiplexers, subscriber management and traffic management systems – without making a major initial investment,” Dishington says.

“. . . a VideoGuard Express system can be installed, configured and on-air within three months of signing the contract.” It enables NDS to offer conditional access know-how and support to small and mid-size operators. “For this reason it’s tailor-made for the Russian market,” Dishington says.

Huge market potential

How large is the Russian market? Russia has an estimated population of more than 140 million. The population of Moscow alone is about 10 million and St. Petersburg is about half that size. In addition there are another 12 Russian cities with a population of about one million or more. Seven of these cities are in Siberia.

“While reaching out to new regional and metropolitan markets within Russia itself, we will also be exploring markets in countries that were part of the former Soviet Union,” Dishington says. These include Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Georgia, he says.

High percentage of analog cable

As for the present pay-TV market, there are an estimated 48 million TV households in Russia, of which about 17 million are analog cable subscribers. Part of the reason for the relatively high percentage of analog cable is that in some of the major cities, where apartment blocks have been built in the last 50 years, cable TV lines were built into them along with other utilities, such as electricity and gas supply. “These cable lines still exist,” Dishington says, “but they offer about 20 channels of rather low-quality programming. The fact is the Russian market is ready for the same improvements in quality and service as seen in other European markets.”

“At present our only Russian customers are in the Moscow region: Sistema’s Stream TV brand (IP) and COMCOR-TV (cable) with their Akado brand. [See ComCor-TV's Michael Silin: 'The Russian Pay-TV Market is Fourishing' in this issue.]  “Last year there were an estimated 300,000 digital pay-TV subscribers in Moscow,” Dishington says. “But we’re just getting started – and so are the operators.”

Both Stream and COMCOR-TV are extremely competitive. Stream has deployed NDS Digital Rights Management solution for IPTV, while COMCOR-TV has implemented NDS VideoGuard conditional access and MediaHighway middleware.

“Recently COMCOR-TV decided to introduce a new user-friendly Java-based EPG. Both operators are interested in introducing DVRs as well as preparing to offer HDTV.”

Meanwhile there are several NDS solutions that are generating a lot of interest in Russia today, Dishington says. These include:

• VideoGuard Express™ for cable systems
• NDS Metro™ for IP systems, and
• VideoGuard Mobile™ for DVB-H to broadcast TV.

“It’s amazing that TV to mobile phones is generating so much interest in such a vast country with a relatively low digital pay-TV penetration,” Dishington says. “But the fact is, mobile phones have become extremely popular,” he says, “and operators in Russia are more than willing to give customers what they want – just like anywhere else.”

For more information:

VideoGuard Express