Intelsat recently introduced a new MPEG-4 satellite-based content delivery and management service known as Ampiage. The service is billed as being a cost-effective video stream upgrade, which will allow North American multiple systems operators expand programming offerings.
"Our goal is to offer services that help our customers reach their goals, and Ampiage will benefit phone companies and cable operators in two very different ways," said David McGlade, CEO of Intelsat. "This is a game-starter for phone companies looking to launch IPTV services for their subscribers and make a video play. Separately, it is also a cost-effective way for cable companies to upgrade to MPEG-4 without having to invest new capital in equipment."
Ampiage was designed to package acquisition, aggregation, encoding, encapsulation and encryption of programming from content providers and redistribute this content to cable and telecom service providers.
The service will upgrade and convert video streams from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 for MSOs. This promises to provide higher transmission quality and better utilization of bandwidth.
"Ampiage represents a 'super head-end' that service providers can use to offer the highest quality, reliable content transport, distribution and content management," said Stephen Spengler, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Intelsat. "A small telco would find it difficult to build an infrastructure that has the suite of capabilities afforded by Ampiage at a cost that would yield a profitable business case. Additionally, an MSO would need to invest millions of dollars on new equipment for each head-end to upgrade to MPEG-4, whereas using Ampiage will allow them to realize amplified cost-savings quickly."
