Several Disney and ESPN Media Networks services will be available via Cavalier Telephone & TV's Internet-protocol-television service in Richmond and Hampton Roads, Va., under terms of a distribution agreement announced Wednesday. Cavalier's Richmond subscribers have had access to ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNEWS, ESPN Classic, ESPN Deportes, ESPNU, ESPN HD, ESPN2 HD, ABC News Now, ABC Family, SOAPnet, Toon Disney, Disney Channel, ESPN Pay-Per-View and ESPN and Disney Video On Demand content, as well as broadband services ESPN360, SOAPnetic, Disney Connection, Movies.com MAX and ABC News Now, since May, and Hampton Roads will get the services in late October.

NTT Cyber Communications Laboratory Group and EXPWAY, have announced that Plala Networks Inc., a pioneer IPTV service provider in Japan, has deployed its 4th MEDIA IPTV service using a technology jointly developed by NTT Cyber Labs and EXPWAY for its Electronic Program Guide (EPG).

JumpTV Inc., the world's leading broadcaster of ethnic television over the Internet, announced it has signed an Internet-broadcast agreement with Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (RTR) to broadcast its international signal (RTR Planeta) exclusively in certain territories.

InfoValue Computing, Inc. (InfoValue), an expert in providing innovative, high-performance video-streaming platforms and solutions, today announced that Allin Interactive, a premier provider of advanced guest-entertainment technologies for the cruise industry, plans to deploy InfoValue QuickVideo software on several major cruise lines. The partnership will enhance numerous television-based guest services on cruise ships.

Barcelona-based entertainment production and distribution company Neptuno Films and the Spanish-based Portal Latino, a subsidiary of Sociedad Digital de Autores y Editores SDAE, have joined forces to greenlight a new IPTV kids channel in Spain named El Gato Feliz (Happy Cat).

TasteTV, the leading online and video on-demand food, wine and lifestyle television network, announced that it is accepting viewer nominations for its newest program, SEXY CHEFS. TasteTV can be seen by millions of viewers from its broadband streaming video channel at www.TasteTV.com and on cable Video On Demand.

More than 106.5 million people, or about 3 out of every 5 U.S. Internet users, streamed or downloaded video during the month of July. In total, nearly 7.2 billion videos were streamed or downloaded by U.S. Internet users for an average of 67 streams per streamer, which means the typical video streamer viewed an average of more than two streams per day.

Yahoo! Sites ranked as the top property by unique U.S. streamers with 37.9 million, followed very closely by MySpace, which attracted 37.4 million U.S. streamers. Fast-rising Youtube ranked third with 30.5 million U.S. streamers, followed by the Time Warner Network (25.7 million U.S. streamers) and Microsoft Sites (16.2 U.S. million streamers).

Cisco Systems announced that HEF Bredbånd A/S, the service provider arm of the HEF utility company serving the Vesthimmerland region of Northern Denmark, is to build a new 5,000 kilometre fibre optic network based on the Cisco Internet Protocol Next-Generation Network (IP NGN) architecture with ServiceFlex design. The new infrastructure aims to bring "triple-play" entertainment- and business-grade communication services, including IPTV featuring 150 channels and video-on-demand (VoD), to more than 80,000 customers. The equal access network using Cisco Fibre to the Home (FTTH) Ethernet technology will help enable HEF Bredbånd A/S to support several separate content providers simultaneously over the same network delivering high-bandwidth services such as IP telephony.

here!, America’s premium gay television network, and Maven Networks Inc. today announced a partnership to create and launch here! Video, a new broadband video channel designed exclusively for gay and lesbian consumers. The channel provides here!’s extensive cache of original and acquired gay and lesbian programming built upon Maven’s Maven Media SystemTM (MMS) leading broadband video platform. The service will enable users to have a superior viewing experience of here! video content across multiple platforms and hardware devices.

Rotani, Inc., a leading developer and designer of wireless 802.11 networking solutions, today announced the release of its VideoPuck software for IPTV use. An after-market upgrade to commercial Wi-Fi equipment, VideoPuck offers IPTV service providers an immediate wireless solution to facilitate their IPTV rollouts and reduce installation costs and time.

KyLinTV announced today the roll-out of a hip and youthful entertainment channel from China, Dragon TV, as part of the largest selection of Chinese entertainment in North America: 26 live broadcast channels and a vast video library that offers subscribers more than 20,000 hours of choice.

Kasenna, The IPTV Company, a leading provider of video-on-demand (VOD) content and MPEG-4 ready IPTV applications for Triple Play services over broadband networks, and Australian systems integrator CombiTel today announced that Kasenna PortalTV has been chosen to deliver first of its kind IPTV services for Regional Internet Australia (RIA). The CombiTel solution for Australia's first MPEG-4 IPTV roll-out integrates Kasenna's PortalTV solution into the IPTV delivery platform that has been developed for the project. The initial roll-out, starting in September 2006, will provide Broadcast IPTV and advanced VOD services in addition to high-speed Internet to about 20,000 subscribers in two regional cities, Townsville and Cairns in Northern Queensland, with further expansion planned into other towns.

Supported by demonstrated strong customer demand and a business model that will generate profitable growth within four years of initial investment, the company said it expects to invest $18.0 billion in net capital from 2004 through 2010 in deploying the nation's largest network that brings the broadband capacity of fiber optics all the way to customers' homes and businesses. This total is net of approximately $4.9 billion that Verizon estimates would otherwise be required to maintain traditional copper-wire technologies over the same period.

Verizon is also seeing strong customer demand for FiOS TV, which was launched in its first market just a year ago. By the end of the third quarter 2006, Verizon expects to have more than 100,000 FiOS TV customers, and the company estimates that about two-thirds of FiOS TV customers have discontinued their cable TV service.

JDSU announced it has been selected by Shanghai China Telecommunications Corporation (China Telecom), the incumbent telecommunications carrier for China, to ensure the installation, maintenance and monitoring of its IPTV services. China Telecom purchased multiple units of JDSU's HST-3000 IP Video test suite with ADSL2+ options and the JDSU QT-200 xDSL and Triple-Play Probe. Both products will be on display at IPTV World Forum Asia 06 in Shanghai, September 27-29 (booths 42-43).

Streaming21, the world's leader in broadcast-quality streaming solutions, today announced that it has successfully delivered Asia's most popular entertainment, Karaoke On Demand (KOD), for Lung Hwa Electronics. Lung Hwa is one of the leading 3C manufacturers in Taiwan, with over 30 years of technology innovations. This joint-developed KOD service will be the world's first KOD service that offers full-screen TV playback with unique "interactive" karaoke features over open networks. In contrast to other commercial KOD deployments around the world, which rely on expensive managed networks, Streaming21's ground-breaking solution works over the Internet and is available to subscribers from any domestic ISP.