Harris Corp. signed a definitive agreement to acquire Aastra Digital Video, a maker of video networking, encoding, decoding and multiplexing technologies used by television broadcasters, telecommunications providers and satellite networks, Harris announced.

Harris will pay about $35 million in cash for Aastra, whose customers include Turner Broadcasting, the National Football League, DirecTV, Bell Canada and the Canadian Television Network. Aastra’s 2005 revenues were about $18 million.

“This acquisition adds to our Total Content Delivery solutions for the broadcast industry and will enable Harris to offer networking products that transport media content over a variety of broadcast, cable, satellite, and telco networks, including those supporting new services such as IPTV and Mobile TV,” Tim Thorsteinson, president of Harris Broadcast Communications Division, said in a statement. “Harris has had an excellent relationship with Aastra for many years, and we believe this acquisition will broaden our engineering resources to address rapidly emerging markets and new services that require expertise in areas such as the distribution and delivery of MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 program streams. This acquisition is a good technology match that creates significant value for our customers.”