Independent Telcos

Twin Lakes's IPTV plan: Infinite and beyond

Dan O'Shea — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 22:54:38 -0500

Twin Lakes Telephone Cooperative, which is based in Gainesboro, Tenn., and has about 37,000 customers, has successfully tested and installed IPTV over DSL. It will now look for approval from its board to deploy commercially and to offer 11 broadcast channels, including local television programming. The telco used IPTV solutions from vendor Infinite Video, which touts the ability of its encoding/middleware/set-top-box offering, featuring its PSI_V video codec, to allow telcos to provide some level of local IPTV programming without having to upgrade to a fiber infrastructure.

For more:
- IPTV News has this post

NCTC should accept telcos

Dan O'Shea — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 10:25:08 -0400

The National Cable Television Cooperative is expected to begin accepting new service provider members in January 2009, after putting a moratorium on new members three years ago. The NCTC reportedly closed its doors to new members because of the possibility that telcos just starting out in the TV business would want to join to gain access to the programming deals the NCTC negotiated with the content industry on behalf of its members. Because those telcos represented a competitive threat to the traditional NCTC membership, the agency instead decided to take some time to review its membership policies.

The moratorium on new members will be lifted in a few months, but the NCTC is not saying yet what its policy will be for accepting new members who are telco IPTV providers. Some of the small telcos who would have benefited from NCTC membership in the past have since been able to benefit from IP Prime, the content program devised by the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative and SES Americom. So, perhaps not as many telcos would be interested in the NCTC now.

However, if the NCTC's goal is to get the best possible content deals for its member companies, they should not only open membership to telcos, but should actively woo them. The greater scale that could be achieved by the NCTC would allow them to get better deals, while also making the association a more relevant agency at a time when cable TV firms and telcos are very much in the same businesses. The result will be that small service providers of all kinds will be able to provide the content their customers want without having to pay too much for that opportunity. The competitive jealousies and squabbles that might arise from the situation are best left for the market to resolve, rather than a closed door.

-Dan

For more:
- see this story at Telephony

Related articles:
IP Prime went live about one year ago

IPTV consolidation: Espial to acquire Kasenna

Dan O'Shea — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:29:35 -0400

Canadian IPTV middleware vendor Espial Group said it will acquire Kasenna, a competitor based in Sunnyvale, Calif., in a move that will aid consolidation in the fragmented IPTV middleware sector. The $6.5 million deal likely will close later this month.

According to Espial, the combined company will have more than 100 service provider customers supporting about 2.4 million IPTV customers. Kasenna customers include Cavalier Telephone, CenturyTel, FastWeb, Kentucky Telephone, SaskTel, Tennessee Telephone, Time Warner Cable, Charter Communications and Knology.

The IPTV middleware market also includes companies such as Minerva Networks, Innovate Systems, Quative, Thomson, Nokia Siemens Networks and many others, though some service providers also have opted to test or use their own middleware, which has made the landscape even more competitive and fragmented.

For more:
- see this report at Multichannel News

Related articles:
IPTV middleware vendors have chased opportunities at independent telcos IPTV middleware report
IPTV middleware problems reportedly delayed some carriers this spring IPTV middleware report