Dedicated to helping small phone companies to offer the triple play -- video, voice and broadband -- SES Americom Inc. reached a multiyear deal with the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative to offer Internet-protocol-TV services to almost 1,000 independent and local telcos.
The small phone companies will be ale to use SES Americom’s “IP-Prime” distribution platform, which will enable them to distribute hundreds of TV channels to subscribers over the same digital subscriber lines that bring them voice and high-speed-Internet access.
NRTC members in as many as four markets will begin trials of IP-Prime in January. A full NRTC commercial launch of IPTV aboard the IP-Prime platform is slated for the second quarter of next year.
The centralized-satellite-delivered IPTV platform originates from SES Americom’s IPTV Broadcast Center in Vernon Valley, N.J., where video content is received, processed and transported to SES Americom’s “AMC-9” satellite, then beamed to authorized video hubs nationwide.
