CENIC And OSTN Unite To Provide IPTV To California's K-20 Education Community

Cypress, CA - The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) recently announced its partnership with Open Student Television Network (OSTN) to deliver IPTV via the California Research & Education Network (CalREN) to 9.5 million end users. CalREN connects 10 University of California campuses; 23 California State University campuses; all California community colleges; the California K-12 system; the Naval Postgraduate School; and many of California's independent universities such as Caltech, University of Southern California (USC), Stanford University, University of San Diego (USD), and University of San Francisco (USF).

OSTN is a provider of educational and foreign language IPTV content and student-produced programming. CENIC is a nonprofit corporation that owns, operates, and manages CalREN on behalf of California's K-20 research and education community.

OSTN launched in 2005 with the only 24-hour, seven-day global channel exclusively devoted to student-produced programming. In 2006, OSTN added CableTV, which delivers educational and foreign language TV channels to colleges and universities via CENIC and other networks. OSTN now is delivered to 41 million users at 4,500 university member campuses and 36 countries around the globe.

CalREN began operation in 1998 and has grown into a state-spanning fiber-optic network encompassing more than 2,500 miles of optical fiber. It serves nearly all of California's public and private research and educational institutions.

All of the more than 140 sites that connect to CalREN have access to its cutting-edge, high-performance Internet networking. CalREN's connections to international research and education networks permit collaboration on advanced research and education on a global scale.

"OSTN not only delivers educational content to California's colleges and universities, but it also provides opportunities for students at those institutions to work together to create content themselves," said Jim Dolgonas, President and CEO of CENIC. "CENIC created the CalREN network to enable precisely this sort of active, collaborative learning environment, and we're delighted that students at our member institutions will be able to take advantage of what OSTN has to offer."

OSTN CableTV includes educational channels such as University of California Television (UCTV). The foreign language channels can include CCTV (Chinese), TV5 (French), RAI (Italian), ART (Arabic), TV Polonia (Polish), SBTN (Vietnamese), MBC (Korean), RTN (Russian), TFC (Filipino), TV Asia (South Asian), TV JAPAN (Japanese), CTI Zhong Tian Channel (Chinese), and C1R (Russian).

"This partnership allows California educators to leverage their investments in CENIC's CalREN network to deliver quality educational and foreign language multimedia content, and that promises tremendous opportunities for learning," said Prashant Chopra, OSTN Chief Executive Officer. "Students not only learn about the global economy and the global society, they can become a part of it as they share their own student-produced content with contributions from students across the globe."

Two CENIC members, San Francisco State and the University of Southern California, provide student-produced content to OSTN.

SOURCE: OSTN and CENIC