SES Americom Launches IP-Prime

SES Americom, a supplier of satellite services to the broadcasting industry, has announced the commercial availability of IP-Prime, a turnkey IPTV service for telcos.

The IP-Prime package includes an array of programming channel options, a carrier-grade headend, a choice of consumer set-top boxes and multiple middleware solutions. It’s designed to offer an open, standards-based turnkey system that allows telcos of all sizes to cost-effectively launch video services, according to the company.

“SES Americom has utilized our decades of experience to build an IPTV solution that is the closest thing to flicking a switch to turn on service,” said Bill Squadron, senior vice president of media partnerships at SES Americom. “We invested tens of millions of dollars and over two years developing IP-Prime, and put the solution through extensive testing so we can be sure we’re offering our customers the most complete, easiest-to-deploy and most cost-effective path for them to offer their subscribers television service. The result of our efforts is that SES Americom is the first company to bring an end-to-end, satellite-based television service to market built completely on the new MPEG-4 video standard.”

IP-Prime comes with existing transport agreements for more than 275 TV channels (including more than 20 HD channels) as well as over 100 digital music channels. Pay per-view and VOD options are also available. Telcos can customize their channel package as well as easily integrate local programming too, according to the company.

SES Americom and NDS jointly demonstrated IP-Prime at Nxtcomm 2007 in Chicago this week.