How Cooptel built a multi-tenant TV platform that turns a Québec cooperative into a regional service provider

Cooptel is a telecommunications cooperative based in Valcourt, Québec — founded in 1944 as the Cooperative Union Valcourt Telephone, and today the only telecommunications cooperative in the province. Its triple-play portfolio serves residential and business members across the Estrie, Montérégie, and Greater Montréal regions, with a fibre footprint built out in rural and underserved communities the national carriers have been slow to reach. By 2024, the cooperative's TV product — CooptelTV — had become the limiting factor in what it could offer its members, and Cooptel set out to replace the entire stack.

Cooptel's previous TV stack — Minerva middleware, a legacy CAS/DRM vendor, and AMINO Linux set-top boxes — was assembled in the early-to-mid 2010s and reflected the design assumptions of that period. By 2024, four pressures were converging on that architecture at the same time:

The combined requirement was unusually demanding for a 10,000-subscriber operator: a complete platform replacement, a complete in-home device replacement, a new multi-tenant architecture, and a phased migration with no service interruption — all on a tight timeline.

Cooptel evaluated several modern OTT/IPTV vendors before selecting Smartlabs. Four factors carried the decision:

“This migration was a strategic move for us to better serve our customers and prepare for the future. Smartlabs offered the technical excellence and agility we needed to transition quickly, without compromise. With this new platform, we not only modernize our core TV service but unlock the ability to support other ISPs through a shared infrastructure model.”

Smartlabs delivered the full software platform behind CooptelTV — middleware, content processing, CDN, DRM, monitoring, applications, and new STB hardware — as a single integrated stack with multi-tenancy built in from the start.

Service delivery (SmartTUBE)

SmartTUBE handles subscriber accounts, profile management, the CooptelTV content catalogue and EPG, entitlements at every playback request, and concurrent-device limits enforced at the middleware layer rather than relying on app-side checks. Each account supports up to five active devices simultaneously — sized for a Québec multi-screen household where a fibre connection is shared by a TV in the living room, a Smart TV in the bedroom, and phones and tablets across the family.

Multi-tenant architecture

Multi-tenancy is the structurally most important part of the deployment. SmartTUBE allows Cooptel to operate multiple independent tenants on a single shared infrastructure, with each tenant maintaining its own isolated subscriber base, content catalogue, branding, and configuration. CooptelTV itself runs as one tenant; additional Québec ISP partners that Cooptel onboards in the future will run as separate tenants from the same headend, using the same Smartlabs platform underneath. For each partner ISP, Cooptel acts as the wholesale TV service provider — the partner gets an operator-grade product without having to build the platform themselves. This is a B2B2C model that small ISPs can rarely afford to build alone, and a regional cooperative is structurally well placed to operate it.

Content processing and delivery (SmartMEDIA)

SmartMEDIA handles content ingestion, live transcoding, recording for catch-up, encryption, and CDN delivery across the full 230-channel package. Output is in HLS and MPEG-DASH with adaptive bitrate, supporting every device class CooptelTV reaches. The intelligent CDN routes requests across origin and edge tiers based on device location, server load, and content availability.

Content protection (Universal DRM)

Smartlabs Universal DRM replaces the previous legacy CAS/DRM. One unified product issues Widevine, PlayReady, and FairPlay licenses from a single platform, with content encrypted once using Common Encryption (CENC) and delivered across all device classes. On-the-fly CENC-to-CBCS re-encryption for FairPlay clients eliminates the duplicate-storage cost of maintaining separate encrypted masters per DRM system.

Multi-screen applications

Smartlabs developed and deployed SmartTUBE Ultra Applications across the device classes CooptelTV reaches:

• iOS and Android mobile apps — published in the App Store and Google Play with offline downloads.
• Smart TV application — for Android TV, distributed through the official TV app store.
• Web app — for desktop and laptop viewing.

All clients share a unified UX and synchronise through the SmartTUBE backend, so a film paused on the TV resumes on a phone with no manual handoff. Critically for the Québec market, every application is fully localised in both French and English — not as a translation overlay but as a first-class product configuration.

In-home device — SML-5045W6

CooptelTV runs on the SML-5045W6 set-top box with integrated Wi-Fi 6 — a Smartlabs-designed Android-based STB with a quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex-A53 processor, hardware HEVC decoding, 4K UHD output up to 60fps, HDMI 2.0 with HDCP 2.2, Gigabit Ethernet, and Widevine Level 3. Wi-Fi 6 matters in the field — Cooptel's fibre footprint includes rural homes where the STB is often connected wirelessly across a long span, and the move from older Wi-Fi standards on the AMINO devices to 802.11ax on the SML-5045W6 measurably improves in-home delivery quality. Cooptel committed to the SML-5045W6 on a multi-year basis.

AMINO STB migration

The installed AMINO Linux STB fleet was retired and replaced. Unlike a software-only migration, the AMINO platform — Linux STBs running Minerva client software with legacy CAS/DRM — was at the end of its hardware and software lifecycle in parallel, and modernising the in-home device delivered three things at once: Wi-Fi 6 in-home delivery, modern hardware-rooted DRM compatible with Universal DRM, and the Android-based runtime on which the SmartTUBE Ultra Application is built. Smartlabs and Cooptel ran the device replacement as part of the phased migration, with continuity of service for subscribers throughout.

QoE monitoring (SmartCARE)

SmartCARE was deployed alongside the rest of the platform, providing client-side and server-side quality monitoring across the full multi-screen estate. Predictive analytics — clustering analysis on shared subscriber attributes (region, ISP partner tenant, device, content) — let Cooptel identify groups of subscribers experiencing similar issues before they show up in support tickets. As Cooptel onboards additional ISP tenants, SmartCARE provides per-tenant visibility into service quality.

The migration was structured as a phased rollout with continuity of service for the existing CooptelTV subscriber base throughout. Subscribers received the new SML-5045W6 STB and the new platform experience in waves, with the legacy Minerva / legacy CAS/DRM / AMINO stack remaining live for non-migrated waves until cutover. The full migration was delivered on the timeline Cooptel set in the original commercial agreement.

• A modernised core TV service. CooptelTV moved from a Minerva / legacy CAS/DRM / AMINO Linux stack to a current-generation SmartTUBE / SmartMEDIA / Universal DRM / SmartCARE platform with native applications across STB, iOS, Android, Smart TVs, and web.
• Approximately 10,000 subscribers migrated to the new platform with continuity of service throughout the phased rollout.
• A 230-channel package delivered across all device classes, with full English and French localisation across every SmartTUBE Ultra Application.
• Five concurrent devices per account, enforced at the middleware layer, sized for a Québec multi-screen household.
• Wi-Fi 6 in-home delivery through the SML-5045W6 STB — a meaningful in-home performance step over the AMINO devices it replaced, particularly for rural fibre subscribers connecting the STB wirelessly across longer distances.
• Multi-tenant headend ready for additional ISP partners. The shared infrastructure lets Cooptel host TV services for additional Québec ISPs as separate tenants — turning a 10,000-subscriber cooperative into a regional wholesale TV service provider with room to grow.
• A multi-year hardware roadmap. Cooptel's commitment to the SML-5045W6 line gives the cooperative a stable, supported in-home device generation for the foreseeable future, with a clear forward path as Smartlabs releases new STB hardware.

“We are thrilled to partner with Cooptel in delivering a modern, high-performance TV experience to their customers. Our platform's flexibility, ongoing innovation roadmap, and the strength of our technical team were critical in meeting Cooptel's ambitious objectives on a tight timeline.”

With the platform live and the existing subscriber base being migrated, the focus shifts to two parallel tracks. The first is steady-state product evolution for CooptelTV itself — additional Smart TV platforms, deeper recommendations, and ongoing roadmap features delivered through the SmartTUBE release cycle. The second is onboarding additional Québec ISP partners as new tenants on the multi-tenant platform — turning the architectural capability into commercial reach beyond Cooptel's own footprint. The Smartlabs platform is built to absorb that growth without re-architecting; each new partner is a new tenant, not a new deployment. For comparable migration stories on different fleets, see the Ucom Uplay launch in Armenia and the O2 Czech Republic Android TV migration, or browse the rest of the Smartlabs case studies.