Satellite services provider, SES Americom, has launched a centralized, satellite- and fiber-delivered IPTV distribution service, dubbed IP-PRIME, which it says will provide smaller telcos with a package of multichannel standard- and high-definition IPTV programming as part of their triple-play offerings. The service will originate from an SES Americom IPTV Broadcast Center (located in Vernon Valley, New Jersey), where video and audio will be received and processed for distribution via satellite and fiber to telco video hubs around the US. SES Americom says that IP-PRIME programming (note: the company has not revealed whether it has secured any programming partners for the new service, though it boasts that it has "powerful relationships with the world's leading television programmers") will be delivered to the hubs in encrypted form, and that it will offer the option of conditional access and middleware solutions that extend to the IP set-top to customers that want to minimize their investment in headends and streamline their video operations. The National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative (NRTC), an organization serving rural and independent telcos which collectively reach 10 million households, has signed a preliminary agreement to begin trials of the new service early next year. The trials will be conducted by several of its member companies.
SES Americom's technology partners for the new service include Scientific-Atlanta and Globecomm Systems. Scientific-Atlanta is providing an MPEG-4 encoding system: SES Americom says that, once the initial phases of the distribution network are complete, it will use more than 100 Scientific-Atlanta MPEG-4 standard-definition encoders. It also plans to use Scientific-Atlanta's ROSA Network Management System. Globecomm Systems, meanwhile, will be responsible for the overall design, and will provide integration services, as well as the major components for the service's IPTV broadcast distribution center, which include systems for RF and program acquisition, MPEG-4 compression, and uplinking services. "SES Americom's IP-PRIME represents a significant advancement in the efficient DSL delivery of high-end video services to the home," SES Americom's president of North American Media, Bryan McGuirk, said in a prepared statement. "By transporting quality video over the most reliable and secure hybrid satellite/fiber distribution network in the world to authorized IP telco hubs, IP-PRIME arms phone companies of all sizes with the solution they need to cost-effectively deliver voice, broadband, and television over a single line to the home. IP-PRIME enables telcos to bypass extensive and expensive fiber installations and accelerate their IPTV initiatives by months, even years."
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