Seoul – NDS, provider of technology solutions for digital pay-TV, has opened a new office in Seoul to house its expanded Korean sales, support and R&D operation which has grown to 120 employees in the last six years. Sue Taylor, VP and General Manager of NDS Asia Pacific, said, “NDS Korea is pivotal in our ability to roll out state-of-the-art technologies, such as advanced conditional access and middleware solutions, set-top box (STB) integration and mobile solutions, to some of the world’s largest broadcasters. The opening of the new NDS Seoul office is in recognition that Korea is a key player in the deployment of digital pay-TV.” NDS’ customers account for about 70% of the Korean pay-TV market with its end-to-end systems deployed across cable, satellite DTH and IPTV platforms including SkyLife, KT MegaTV and BSI, KDMC, GSGB and CJ CableNet. Also, Korea is moving towards full digitization with government initiatives promoting full digital conversion by 2012. The increase in the level of competition and consumer choice in the Korean pay-TV and broadband market is expected to accelerate uptake of digital solutions. Separately, NDS signed an agreement with Malaysia’s Measat Broadcast Network Systems to license and deploy the NDS VideoGuard conditional access system (CAS) for the latter’s DTH pay TV service, Astro. Astro’s migration to the VideoGuard CAS follows its deployment of NDS’ Mediahighway middleware as its operating system for set-top boxes since 1999.