Even though SES Americom announced the folding of its IP-Prime business last year (story here), there remain those who believe that providing end-to-end video support can still be a lucrative business. Add Cisco to that list.
Cisco and Avail Media are joining forces to offer service providers relatively easy means to offer IPTV, using the former’s Internet Protocol Next Generation Network (IP NGN) and the latter’s IP-based video service.
Cisco and Avail Media are offering a package that includes encoding, encapsulation, middleware and digital rights management, scrambling and descrambling, satellite receivers, conditional access, set-top provision, service management, systems integration services, and program management for video hub office components. The companies will also perform integration services.
Once the network is in place, IPTV services are fully managed through Cisco’s National Control Center. In other words, customers do not need to set up their own headends.
Video is delivered in the MPEG-4 format.
“This solution greatly reduces the complexity of, and time to market for, service provider IPTV deployments,” said Dave Davies, vice president and general manager for IPTV solutions at Cisco.
