NTCA: Eagle Broadband, GlobeCast offer up turnkey IPTV

San Antonio--Eagle Broadband and France Telecom subsidiary GlobeCast signed a multi-year agreement at the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association show here and officially launched a turnkey IPTV service targeting small local incumbents and municipal networks.

The IPTVComplete package combines Eagle's access gear and perhaps even more important, its IP video content rights with GlobeCast's satellite network to offer a little more than 200 channels of IP-based video and digital music. Telcos that sign up for the service will have a remote head installed, which receives signals from one of GlobeCast's national headends either in Miami or Los Angeles. Local off-air channels and other content is injected at the remote headend.

Carriers will pay a licensing fee to the partnership as well as a portion of the IP video revenue. Though the companies have yet to announce any customers, both see opportunity among the 1200-plus independents.

"There's a wide range of knowledge and skills in telcos when it comes to video," said Randy Shapiro, vice president of marketing at Eagle Broadband. "We can handle people at both ends of the spectrum."

The key play for telcos is saving the $1 million-plus it can take to set up a headend on their own. The partnership also gives telcos a relatively easier entry into high-definition video, said David Szelag, director of engineering sales support for GlobeCast.

"We take whatever the broadcasters are putting up and don't decode it," he said, noting that the company will encrypt much of the content. "If they're broadcasting in HD, we're able to do that right away."