Antananarivo, 6 december 2021

AXIAN is proud to announce its new partnership with Zattoo, one of Europe’s foremost on-demand satellite TV providers, to expand the range of services that are available to its clients. Telma, an AXIAN Group subsidiary, and the biggest telecoms operator in the Indian Ocean, has now integrated all channels managed by Zattoo, which are fully-hosted and available via its TV decoders. This will in turn allow for IPTV and OTT services to bring new entertainment options to the streaming generation.

Telma, part of the AXIAN Group, has more than five million subscribers in Madagascar and Comoros, and was looking to further strengthen its position as the leading telecommunications provider in Madagascar with TV services made available to both fixed-line and mobile-only subscribers. As part of this project, AXIAN wanted an end-to-end TV platform partner whom it could trust with launching its first-ever TV service for customers fully remotely and within a short period of time.

“From the outset, Zattoo proved it had the technical capabilities and expertise to help us achieve our ambitious goal of launching a fully-fledged IPTV service within 5 months in the middle of a global pandemic. Zattoo delivered on that promise. Its highly experienced team worked closely with the Telma team and proved to be flexible enough to cater to specialized requirements French-speaking Africa and local markets, in the facilitation of mobile-based subscriptions. The greatest bonus of all is that customer registrations for the TV service are already many times higher than our initial projections.” Bertrand Lacroix, CCO of Telma.

Telma’s new TV service comes with a wide range of features including nPVR with 7-day catch up and instant restart. All of this is enabled through Zattoo-developed white label applications for web, mobile devices (Android Mobile & iOS), Chromecast and a Telma-branded Android TV Operator Tier set-top box. Telma is specifically approved by Google to use Android TV for this purpose—this remains a first for the African TV market while Telma is still the only African operator to enjoy access to Android TV.

To underpin the more prevalent viewing platforms in Africa, Zattoo also worked with Telma to facilitate daily and monthly-pass options designed for the take-up and streaming of TV channels on mobile devices. Except for Zattoo’s pre-configured local caching servers, Telma had to deploy no dedicated hardware or software. The entire service is hosted and managed by Zattoo via data centers in Zürich, Frankfurt and Paris.

“We are delighted to have successfully secured and launched our first implementations in Africa with Telma and AXIAN Group. Time and again, we have proven that the Zattoo TV Platform is up to the task of providing a leading Telco with a platform and the support to launch a state-of-the-art, multi-featured TV service to its end customers.”  Niklas Brambring, CEO of Zattoo.

ABOUT THE AXIAN GROUP

AXIAN is a pan-African group that specialises in 5 industries with high-growth potential, namely real estate, telecoms, financial services, energy and innovation. AXIAN operates directly in 7 countries across the Indian Ocean and Africa and is a proactive partner in the social and economic growth of countries it operates in.

Its 5,000 passionate and daring staff strive to ensure that its operations generate and positive and sustainable impact on the day-to-day lives of millions of Africans.

The AXIAN Group is a UN Global Compact signatory and committed to integrating its 10 Sustainable Development Goals to its operations and strategies.

Find out more on AXIAN at www.axian-group.com

ABOUT TELMA

Group Telma is the First Telecoms Operator in Indian Ocean area with 5 million subscribers in Madagascar and 200 000 in Comoros. Telma is the forerunner of 5G Mobile Carrier in Madagascar. Telma deploy the best infrastructures and technologies to offer the best carrier (fix/mobile/internet), gear (smartphone, tablet), Mobile Money (MVola) and advertising (portal Moov).

ABOUT ZATTOO

With more than 30 customers and several million active users per month, Zattoo is one of the leading TV-as-a- Service platforms in Europe. Its customers include Tier 1 operators like 1&1 in Germany, eir in Ireland, Salt in Switzerland and Monaco Telecom, for whom ZATTOO offers fully hosted and managed IPTV, OTT and TV Everywhere services. The focus is on a White Label product with state-of-the-art features and applications for all relevant devices and covering all common ones: Android TV for operator set- top boxes as well as Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Smart TVs and mobile devices (iOS / Android / Windows 10).

ZATTOO gained recognition for its achievements in 2020 with the awarding of the Technology and Engineering Emmy® Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

For more information please visit thetvplatform.zattoo.com

Read the press release