SBC taps SA for IP video

SBC Communications today announced a key equipment vendor and new details about the national IP video network it is building as part of Project Lightspeed.

The telecom giant awarded a $195 million contract to Scientific-Atlanta for IP video equipment that will be used in one national IP Video Operations Center, two national IP Video Super Hub Offices and 41 IP Video Hub Offices to be located primarily in major metropolitan areas. The competitive bidding process was expedited to enable SBC to open the national VOC, one of the Super Hub Offices and four of the Video Hub Offices this year, said a spokesman. The remaining network will be completed in 2006-2007.

It will include 140 IP serving offices to actually distribute the video signals into homes connected via Project Lightspeed's fiber optic and fiber/copper networks. "Scientific Atlanta won this contract through a competitive bid evaluation process," said the spokesman. "They were chosen based on their proven video network experience and their design-build proposal."

Scientific-Atlanta, a dominant vendor in the cable TV space, will provide encoders, satellite dishes, video routers and professional services, including assistance in designing and building the Video Operations Center, the super hub offices and the video hub offices. SBC has not yet announced what form of video encoding it will use.

The VOC will be the network's command center, home to the design, engineering, furnish and integration expertise and the point at which video quality will be monitored, the spokesman said.

The switched IP video network will deliver content to Project Lightspeed customers on demand--consuming bandwidth to deliver video only when it is requested. Content from satellite feeds will be converted to IP packets at the super hub offices, which will process and encode the video stream and distribute it to video hub offices in each metro area via SBC's IP backbone network. At the video hub office, local video content is acquired and encoded and all content is delivered to customers, based on what they request. The content will include broadcast programming, video-on-demand and interactive applications, according to SBC.