Amino Communications, the Cambridge start-up specialising in TV over Internet protocol (IPTV), can now attract tier one customers following its initial public offering (IPO) in June and is about to do a big deal in Japan.

That's a substantial turnaround. "Between 1997 (when Amino was founded) and 2003, we were burning cash with huge debts," said Giddy. "We turned a profit in December 2003 and in Q1 2004 had £4m turnover with a healthy profit."

Amino has 312 worldwide deployments of its IPTV gateways. "We'd prefer to call them gateways although, because they sit next to the TV, we have to call them set-top boxes," said Giddy.

Amino's biggest deployment is with Hong Kong Broadband Network which has taken 40,000 boxes, and telcos are rolling out IPTV using Amino boxes in Sweden, Cyprus and Slovenia. "We are about to do some really big business in Japan," said Giddy.

The company has 17 volume deployments (over 1,000 boxes a month) in North America. Small US telcos are a potential source of revenue as well. "There are 1,100 regional telcos in the US averaging 50,000 subscribers each," said Giddy. "The small guys are the early adopters - they're the innovators."

Giddy joined Amino in 2001 to do licensing deals for its technology. 2001 was not a good time to sell licences, so Amino designed a product, manufactured it in China and is selling it worldwide.

"It's real engineering, real selling and no politics," said Giddy.