Soft At Home joint venture to gun for Mediaroom territory

February 25, 2008 – French firms Orange, Thomson and Sagem Communications have announced the formation of the joint venture Soft At Home, intended to create a standard for the interconnection of equipment within a multimedia subsystem and challenging domain inhabited by Microsoft’s Mediaroom.

The joint venture will initially be majority owned (60%) by Orange, with the other two partners holding 20% each, and will employ between 70 and 80 staff by the end of this year.  Thomson spokeswoman Martine Esquirou said that the companies plan to “open up the shareholding to other partners, mainly operators.  Probably, in the coming months and years, Orange’s share will be reduced.”

The aim of the joint venture is to hasten adoption of technology that will enable digital devices to interconnect over a home network – allowing users to access content stored anywhere in the home network.

New Orange products scheduled for launch this year are anticipated to have the Soft At Home software, as well as products from Thomson and Sagem, such as set-top boxes and home gateways.

Georges Penalver, Marketing Director of France Telecom - which owns Orange - said at a joint press conference that the joint venture is looking to compete with Microsoft and is already in discussions with several operators in China, North America and Northern Europe to license the software.