Thursday, 15 February 2007

Cisco, SES Americom to Launch IPTV Solution for RLECs

Cisco and SES AMERICOM, an SES company (Euronext Paris and Luxembourg stock exchanges : SESG), have inked an agreement to enable Rural Local Exchange Carriers (RLECs) in North America to offer IPTV to their subscribers using a solution that combines the Cisco IP Next-Generation Networks (IP NGNs) with SES AMERICOM's IP-PRIME IPTV service. The offering processes content and television programming and distributes it via satellite to telecommunications companies and their IPTV consumers nationwide. Systems integration from both companies and their respective partners is an integral part of the offering, the companies are quoted to have said.

In rural areas of the United States, telecommunications companies will offer IP-PRIME through the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative (NRTC) in partnership with the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association (NTCA). Cisco and SES AMERICOM understand the challenges RLECs face in transforming themselves from voice and data providers to 'Experience Providers' that can offer any-play services anywhere, anytime, the companies stated.

The fully-managed SES IP-PRIME solution combined with the Cisco IP NGN architecture creates a complete IPTV service with encoding, encapsulation, third-party middleware, scrambling/descrambling, satellite receivers, conditional access, set-top boxes, service management and integration services, as per the statement issued by the companies.