Latvia’s Tet eyes streaming white label market following Telia Latvija acquisition

Latvian network operator and technology company Tet has outlined plans to target the media services, streaming and OTT solutions market following its acquisition earlier this of Telia Latvija.

Tet acquired 100% control of IT and media solutions provider Telia Latvija in June. Former parent Telia remains a 49.9% shareholder of Tet, with the Latvian government owning the majority stake.

According to Tet, one of the most promising business lines that stands to benefit from the acquisition is media services, streaming and OTT solutions.

Tet is now aiming to offer its OTT technology to the market as a white label product.

The company said that by merging TV services and solutions, Tet will provide a powerful toolkit for any kind and size of media business, starting from individual video content creators up to large enterprise level companies.

The company sees opportunities to target the OTT market, citing growth influenced by the pandemic, changes in consumer behavior as well as understanding the pain points of telecommunication companies.

The integration process will continue until the end of the year. During this time Telia Latvija products and solutions will be added to Tet business portfolio, and Telia employees will join Tet team.

“Last year Tet developed a unique ‘a la carte’ OTT platform Tet+ that allows customers to personalize their TV package and combine it with streaming services. The solution is also available as a white label concept, enabling enterprises to use the technology under their own brands. At the same time, such Telia Latvija cloud solutions for media as online video platform, transcoding, content delivery network, and TV playout are already known in the media and streaming technology industry,” said Tet CEO Uldis Tatarčuks.

“When creating the Tet+ platform, we took into account the growing demand for highly personalized content and conducted over 700 user tests to ensure that the solution interface fully meets the needs of our customers,” says Inga Alika-Stroda, Director of entertainment services business at Tet.

“The main reasons to choose a ready-made platform are that its implementation takes no more than six months, while independent development of a solution from scratch can take several years. In addition, companies don’t have to worry about platform support and service and can focus on their core business and customers.”

Norberts Osītis, Head of solutions for media at Telia Latvija, said that Telia’s solutions for media processing and streaming were well-advanced, with a new version of its flagship video platform launching in August.

“The video platform is our self-developed flagship product. In August we launched a new version that has a new management portal interface with pre-built and configurable views intended at much broader user spectrum, which also includes non-technical users like content editors and managers, who do not want to see technical complexities. At the same time there are hard-core technical users, who want to dig deep into video and audio transcoding configurations,” said Osītis.

“The platform works as a SaaS product available for purchase online and provides all features in self-service mode. Our aim is to allow all different user types to feel at home in our platform, hide the complexities from those who do not need them, but enable sophisticated features for others. The platform provides automation and solves technical complexities in the background. All users can upload and process media assets, update the information related to the media and publish them to respective websites and applications regardless of their specific technical skills.”