Appear | Appear, Zeop and Lucas Telecom bring French digital television services to Reunion Island

2 September, Oslo, Norway — Appear, the global leader in media processing and delivery technology, today 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 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.”

The project was completed remotely due to ongoing global travel restrictions. It began in February 2021 and was completed in May.

ENDS

About Appear
Appear is a leading provider of media processing and delivery technology. Headquartered in Oslo, Norway and with customers in over 100 countries, Appear provides the backbone that production companies, telcos and broadcasters rely on to make immersive live experiences possible for their viewers. With world-class products and expertise, Appear’s focus on modularity, efficiency and high quality helps customers stay ahead of competition in a market where expectations and requirements are constantly changing and evolving.

About Lucas Telecom
Lucas Telecom is a Systems Integrator providing integrated solutions to carriers and service providers, so that they deliver triple-play telecommunications services (Telephony, Internet, Television) to their Customers over any fix broadband access network (Cable TV, ADSL/VDSL, Fibre, Wireless network).

Lucas Telecom sells then multi-supplier equipment with a full set of professional services from network design to installation, commissioning and on-site training with maintenance technical support on delivered solutions, as well as possible additional consultancy services such as network assessment and full remote operations of the carrier’s network over EMEA and The Caribbean area.

About Zeop
ZEOP is the leading fix broadband and 4G+ mobile carrier in Reunion Island. ZEOP deploys its own very high-speed optical fibre network (FTTH, FTTO and FTTC), completely independent of ADSL network of Incumbent carrier. ZEOP is the top broadband carrier in terms of market share and offers up to 2.4 Gb/s for all its subscribers. 100% of its customers have access to triple-play offers with HD TV and VOD. Reunion-based carrier for Reunion citizens, ZEOP employs more than 200 people in Reunion. Since the 14th of May 2019, ZEOP operates also its own 4G+ mobile network, first French mobile network offering unlimited Internet in all its packages.

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