SES AMERICOM expands its satellite services with new IP video service

SES AMERICOM’s new IPTV distribution service, IP-PRIME, leverages both satellite and fiber networks for secure and reliable delivery. The service has already garnered widespread interest and real-life deployments among large and small telecom operators across the country and around the world, who until now have faced major fi nancial and technical barriers to adding IPTV to their service portfolios.

The SES AMERICOM IPTV broadcast center in Vernon Valley, NJ, is an open IPTV distribution platform, which offers IP-PRIME customers the ability to choose among IPTV technology providers and their components, including set-top boxes, security, conditional access, encoding and network monitoring, and middleware from innovators such as Amino, Harmonic, IDC, NDS, Scientific-Atlanta and Siemens. Scientific-Atlanta provides multiple key technologies in support of IP-PRIME, including an MPEG-4 HD and SD encoding system and network monitoring center — all fully integrated and operational — and its ROSA Network Management system.

By the time IP-PRIME makes its commercial debut in early 2007, it will offer more than 300 SD and HD channels. The National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative, representing more than 1000 rural and independent telecoms throughout the United States, is already deep into successful end-to-end IPPRIME trials in four markets across the country. The service delivers from the point of IPTV programming origination all the way to the IPTV set-top box in the consumer home.

Meanwhile, BellSouth has been trialing the second fl avor of IP-PRIME for more than a year — the transport of IPTV content to the telco’s video hub, where it is handed off to BellSouth for delivery to authorized subscribers. The quick and affordable delivery of IPPRIME programming requires more than a technologically advanced solution, it also relies greatly on SES AMERICOM’s established relationships with worldwide programmers and networks.

IP-PRIME represents a signifi cant advancement in the effi cient DSL delivery of high-end video services to the home. By transporting quality video over a reliable and secure hybrid satellite/fiber distribution network to authorized IPTV telecom hubs, it arms phone companies of all sizes with a cost-effective solution for delivering voice, broadband and video over a single line to the home. The solution enables telecoms to bypass extensive and expensive fiber installations and accelerate their IPTV initiatives by months, even years.

More than 30 TV programmers and networks representing 300 video and audio channels have signed IPTV transport agreements, and the IPTV solution is ahead of schedule as it approaches its commercial launch.