Spain's Telefonica has signed an agreement with U.S. vendor Lucent Technologies that will put ongoing development and deployment of Telefonica's Imagenio IPTV middleware platform, which powers the carrier's IPTV services and is being marketed to other carriers, into Lucent's hands.

Lucent's responsibilities also will include the ongoing introduction of new features and capabilities, and marketing the platform to the broader, global service provider community. Lucent also will establish IPTV research and development centers--linked to its Bell Labs unit--in the Spanish cities of Madrid and Huesca, as well as in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo to serve Latin American markets.

In addition, Lucent Worldwide Services, the company's services arm, will serve, as the prime network integrator for Telefonica's end-to-end, multivendor IPTV solution, initially in markets including Brazil, Chile, the Czech Republic and Spain. The project will be extended to include additional countries in the future.

"This comprehensive agreement will help Telefonica remain a leading provider of innovative IPTV services," said Vicente San Miguel, general director of Infrastructure and Information Systems, Telefonica Group, in a statement. "Lucent has proven to be an exceptional partner as we launched and expanded our 'Imagenio' IPTV service in Spain, where we are now supporting more than 250,000 customers. We look forward to continuing this fruitful relationship as we take this successful service to additional market and introduce innovative new multimedia features, leveraging the power of the IP multimedia subsystem, IMS."