SES Americom to Cease Offering its Turnkey IPTV Service, IP-PRIME

SES Americom says that it will cease offering its IP-PRIME service by July 31st, 2009. The service is a customizable, MPEG-4-based, turnkey IPTV solution, featuring a range of SD and HD channels and targeted at small and medium-sized telcos. According to SES Americom, its decision to terminate the service was driven by the slow adoption of IPTV by small and medium-sized telcos and by "the difficult outlook for this kind of service." "In line with its plan, IP-PRIME has contracted IPTV signal delivery agreements with 70 small telecom operators, of which 37 have so far reached commercial stage," Rob Bednarek, president and CEO of SES Americom-New Skies, said in a prepared statement. "However, with a subscriber base of less than ten thousand at the end of November, and after more than two years of service, the consumer uptake is insufficient to justify continuing operations." SES Americom says that keeping the service alive through next summer will "offer telecom operators an opportunity to orderly transfer their services and SES Americom, in collaboration with third parties involved in the service, to seek the best option to transition the business."