IP-PRIME's Market Leadership Reinforced with Sixty Plus Telco Contracts and Commercial Rollouts in Two Dozen Communities

Strategic Technology Partners Showcase IP-PRIME in their TelcoTV Exhibits

PRINCETON, N.J. & ANAHEIM, Calif. — On the eve of TelcoTV, the country’s most important IPTV conference, SES AMERICOM, an SES company (Euronext Paris and Luxembourg Stock Exchange: SESG), announced that more than sixty-five telcos in 31 states have signed up for IP-PRIME®. The market has adopted IP-PRIME either as a complete IPTV programming solution offering more than 200 standard definition and more than 50 high definition channels transported to the head end, or as an exclusive HD solution installed as an overlay to existing IPTV operations. Of the current telco customers, more than two dozen are commercially delivering IP-PRIME to subscribers today, with another dozen expected to “turn on” by year’s end.

To meet the network development and local head-end technical requirements of the telco, IP-PRIME is leveraging experienced partners such as technology developers Cisco, Falcon and Nortel to design, deploy and support the telco’s video distribution solution from the head end to the subscriber’s set top box. Also telcos can successfully rely on trusted network engineering firms, many of whom are already familiar with the local network infrastructure, to deliver the head end and network equipment, middleware, billing system and set top boxes necessary to complete the terrestrial IPTV system.

Demonstrating the widespread recognition of IP-PRIME’s market leadership, the service is being showcased with live feeds in eleven TelcoTV exhibits on the show floor including: AMT, (booth 833), Cisco (booth 719), Conklin-Intracom (booth 633), Entone (booth 649), Falcon (booth 333), Hitachi (booth 427),Minerva (booth 540), Nokia Siemens (booth 533), Occam (booth 801), Tellabs (booth 564), Verimatrix (booth 827).

“We are signing more IP-PRIME contracts every month, and we are especially pleased that almost one third of the telcos that pioneered IPTV in MPEG-2 have adopted our HD-4 solution,” said Jim Ducay, Chief Operating Officer, SES AMERICOM. “We are also very fortunate that most of our world-class partners are here at the show and are featuring live IP-PRIME feeds in their booths. Naturally, we are very excited to be working with them to provide telcos with the end-to-end managed solution that best meets their specific commercial needs.”

IP-PRIME’s full transport solution gives operators a broad selection of programming from literally hundreds of SD and HD channels, plus more than 50 audio/music channels (a full list is available at the IP-PRIME’s TelcoTV booth #547) that are sent via satellite for integration into the operators’ head ends and local distribution networks. The HD-4 service offers operators, who are currently delivering IPTV services, access to dozens of channels of HD in MPEG-4,that are received via satellite for integration into their head ends and local distribution networks. When implementing either IP-PRIME solution, the operator saves as much as 90% when compared to the cost of building their own MPEG-4 IPTV solution.

“IP-PRIME was the quickest solution we had to bring HD services to the community. Speed to market was key – from contract signing to actual implementation, equipment installation and actual turn up was about eight weeks.” Scott Walter, Director of Network Services, Hickory Tech, Mankato, Minnesota.