Appear brings French digital TV services to Reunion

02 September, 2021

NOR: Appear, the global leader in media processing and delivery technology, has announced that it has successfully upgraded Zeop's broadcasting infrastructure with its reseller partner Lucas Telecom to bring French digital television services to viewers on Reunion Island.

Located approximately 550 km (340 mi) east of Madagascar, Reunion Island is a French territory in the Indian Ocean. The island’s leading network carrier, Zeop, offers services through optical fibre (FTTH) to residential and business customers and needed to refresh their legacy video network to be able to deliver unique triple play services to those customers.

To deliver Linear TV using broadcast technologies, IP multicast for FTTH and RF for Cable TV customers, Zeop has deployed Appear’s X Platform at two data centres in Paris. From the data centres, video content is transmitted by submarine cable to a new Appear headend on Reunion Island, where the X and XC Platforms combined technology is deployed, and where content can be distributed across the island.

Lucas Telecom remotely managed the deployment of Appear’s technology for Zeop. Appear’s X10 has been deployed at its Paris datacentres, while Appear’s XC5100 and X20 have been operating at the Reunion Island headend for Satellite and DTT reception. An additional X Platform has also been deployed at the headend for video processing and scrambling. Finally, the XC5100 is being used for distributing TV services through FTTH and Cable access networks.

Appear was able to solve Zeop’s challenge, providing the foundation of a new future proof video headend enabling the expansion of new services such as OTT streaming in addition to support channel line-up extension for the next years.

“Our priority is first and foremost to deliver the best television experiences for our customers, but we weren’t able to offer the new and unique services that our customers want and expect. We knew we needed to modernise, but wanted to avoid the pitfalls of the past and future proof ourselves,” said Xavier Joseph, CEO at Zeop. “Lucas Telecom is a company we’ve worked with in the past, and we fully trusted its advice and technology recommendations from Appear. The implementation was seamless, even though it was conducted remotely during the pandemic. What is perhaps most important though, is that our customers can now enjoy the television services they want and love.”

Christophe Lucas, CEO at Lucas Telecom also commented, “As a longstanding partner to Zeop, we wanted to ensure that we had both the technical knowledge and capability to complete this complex project. Appear was the perfect partner for us on this - the versatility and reliability of its technologies, along with the ease of integration, were precisely what was needed to fulfil the needs of this project, and to ensure Zeop’s television services are future proofed for the next 10 years.”

Speaking on the project Thomas Bostrøm Jørgensen, Chief Executive Officer at Appear pictured said, “The Zeop project with Lucas Telecom was a massive logistical challenge. The island’s location, the global situation, and the very specific needs of Zeop presented a challenge which only Appear’s solutions could solve. The benefits that Zeop is already seeing is a testament to both the quality of Lucas Telecom’s consultancy, orchestrating a complex implementation under difficult circumstances, as well as the flexibility, reliability and capability of our technology.”