Independent telephone companies that want to get into video but aren’t ready to take the financial plunge of investing in and maintaining a video headend and aggregating content can now hand off that part of the operation. This quarter, startup Broadstream Communications Inc. will launch a virtual headend service through which it will outsource those functions for IOCs. The IP TV Transport Network requires a onetime $50,000 startup fee and $15,000 per month based on a five-year commitment, says Anthony Bontrager, president and CEO of Broadstream Communications. He adds that carriers using the service will realize a 60 percent cost savings on a monthly recurring basis vs. investing in their own headends and aggregating content.
IOCs with 5,000 to 25,000 subscribers are Broadstream’s target customers for this service, which is available throughout the United States, in southern Canada and northern Mexico. There were four pilot customers using the service as of last November, when Broadstream announced the service at the TelcoTV conference in Las Vegas. The company had planned to announce its first commercial users of the service last month.
The service centralizes the aggregation, realtime digital encoding and IP encapsulation of programmer content, suitable for distribution via xDSL, fiber or wireless networks.
The IP TV Transport Network was developed with, and is based on, equipment from TANDBERG Television, SES-Americom and SkyStream Networks.
Broadstream manages and maintains both the live programming streams and edge equipment installed at the service provider facility from its network operations center. No new equipment purchase is required of the service provider. The company says it plans to offer more than 100 video and audio programs in digital quality through agreements with nearly every major broadcaster and programmer in the country.
Next on Broadstream’s agenda is an “Ethernet in the sky” service that will enable IOCs to backhaul data traffic, Bontrager tells xchange. That service is expected to launch in the third quarter.
