April 23, 2012 — Moulton, IA – One Iowa telephone company has proven that IPTV video can be delivered economically even though they have a small customer base. By utilizing a strategy of headend sharing and middleware sharing, this small southern Iowa telephone company is able to provide its customers with a quality video service that can effectively compete with satellite offerings. Farmers Mutual Coop deploys their IPTV through the Iowa Network Services shared headend and shares their middleware with another rural telephone company, Citizens Mutual in Bloomfield, Iowa.
Switching to APMAX™ Middleware, according to Farmers Mutual General Manager Tammy Wheeler, has been recognized as a vast improvement by their subscribers, almost immediately. Wheeler adds, “News of the upgrade of service has spread throughout our exchange area and the benefit is that we are getting a number of new customers each week, which is significant in the rural Telco environment.”
The majority of the subscriber feedback relating to the new system has been about the responsiveness and the overall appearance of the program guide. Wheeler says they are also pleased with how well the DVR component has been received by their customers adding, “Our inventory of DVR set top boxes is almost gone which is certainly a nice problem for us.”