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A new IPTV content aggregator is making broadband operators in Latin America its primary focus.
Report: Steve Hawley
According to Point-Topic, DSL penetration grew at a cumulative aggregate rate of 121 per cent in Argentina during the period between 2003 and 2005. Growth was 73pc in Brazil, 34pc in Chile and a whopping 138 per cent in Mexico, with the rest of Latin America growing at 102pc during that same period. The total number of DSL subscribers in Latin America, as of Q4 2005 was estimated at 5.6 million.
With such strong evidence of growth in these markets, it is not surprising that IPTV- Americas, a new IPTV business-to-business service provider, is preparing to test its 60 channel IPTV programme bundle with operators in Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and Argentina during the first quarter of this year.
IPTV-Americas is already testing with two operators in Panama, one of them being Cable and Wireless, the incumbent telephone company, and the other being a private operator that serves business and residential high-rise developments. In addition, the IPTV-Americas service offering is being evaluated by integrators serving those regions to be part of their own IPTV packages.
IPTV-Americas operates a centralised headend in Miami, where it receives 60 channels of live TV and pay-per-view programming designed for Latin American audiences from many major media companies, over satellite downlink. The Miami headend uses TANDBERG Television EN5930 video encoders with 1:10 redundancy to convert video to MPEG-4 (AVC), then bundles it for distribution. IPTV-Americas allows operators to choose between content protection options from Verimatrix and Nagravision. When IPTV-Americas adds VOD later in 2007, video servers from BitBand will be added.
The IPTV-Americas data centre is connected via two MPLS lines to the NAP (Network Access Point) of the Americas, a major international peering facility that allows IPTV-Americas to hand programming off to other operators. “All the major incumbent Latin American operators have connectivity at the NAP of the Americas, as well as many from Europe and Asia,” said Alvaro Gazzolo, IPTV-Americas President and CEO. IPTVAmericas has fully redundant Cisco 7609 routers and optical network patch panels there, so it can interconnect with an operator’s network in hours.
Optical distribution
From the NAP of the Americas, programming is distributed over STM-1 optical links, using ATM or point-to-point transport, to the country of destination. As one of the original founders of PanAmSat in 1988, one would have expected Mr. Gazzolo to have a bias in favour of satellite transport between the IPTV-Americas headend and local markets, but this has not been the case. “We found that companies like Global Crossing, Telefonica, Brasil Telecom and Arcos can rent STM-1 transport facilities to us with 155Mbps capacity – plenty for our needs – for tens of thousands of dollars per month,” said Mr. Gazzolo. “Compare that with $1.3 to $1.5 million per year for one satellite transponder with 50Mbps capacity, times three. You end up at about $350,000 per month for satellite.” An STM-1 line has sufficient capacity for 80 channels of standard-definition programming
encoded in MPEG-4 (AVC).
The company believes that Latin American operators will have success targeting IPTV not only to consumers in A and B tiers, as is true for Europe and North America, but also to C and D tiers, as has been demonstrated in
China. As for HDTV, IPTV-Americas is talking with one major media company that already offers programming bundles for Latin American markets, and it is planning to add one channel of HD. IPTV-Americas will be testing that HDTV programming over its network to help that media company with its Latin America HD launch. Mr. Gazzolo is realistic about the limited prospects for HDTV in these markets but believes there will be sufficient demand from consumers in higher segments to justify it.
IPTV-Americas infrastructure and transport partners
Headend TANDBERG Television
Content Protection Verimatrix, Nagravision
Middleware Minerva Networks, Quative, Industria, SentiVision (plus Myrio and Kasenna, due to
their partnerships with Verimatrix)
VOD BitBand, SeaChange
Set-top boxes Sunniwell, ADB, CoShip, Amino
Transport Telefonica, Global Crossing, New World Network
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