Claro launching commercial IPTV this month

Quadruple-play telecoms and pay-TV operator Claro Puerto Rico, part of the America Movil group, has confirmed that it will officially launch commercial IPTV services by the end of March 2013, reports NextvLatAm quoting company executive Enrique Ortiz de Montellano. IPTV will initially be available in the Metropolitan region of San Juan, Mayaguez, Ponce and other municipalities, and Claro expects to expand the service across other regions of the island soon, as it deploys the necessary infrastructure. As previously reported by CommsUpdate, Claro upgraded its fixed broadband network in October 2012 with the launch of fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) and fibre-to-the-curb (FTTC) platforms, while its previous pay-TV offerings were based on satellite direct-to-home (DTH). ‘Offering a top-of-the-line infrastructure takes up time’, stated Ortiz de Montellano, adding that, ‘for this service, we delivered FTTH and, in some other cases, FTTC, whose deployment requires authorisations, fibre construction and many other things… We also executed all service agreements with [TV] channels, which takes up time.’ Claro’s IPTV packages will be bundled with 1Mbps, 3Mbps, 5Mbps or 8Mbps broadband, and will include about 200 channels, 40 of which will be high-definition (HD).