SES Americom kills wholesale IPTV offering due to slow adoption

It is too soon to tell if SES’s decision to forego IP-Prime is a reflection of the larger IPTV industry, Arnason said. The IP-Prime package, commercially launched in July 2007, includes a range of more than 200 standard definition and 50 HD channels or an exclusive HD overlay to existing IPTV operations for North American telcos that want to offer IPTV without investing in their own headends.

Existing IP-Prime customers will have until the end of July to find a new wholesale partner if they so choose. Although Kisilywicz dismissed the idea of online video as a real competitive threat in last week’s call, over-the-top (OTT) video that leverages the existing broadband network is also increasingly being viewed as an alternative to the wholesale model. Arnason said it opens up opportunities for other content aggregators like Avail Media and Falcon, as well as potential Internet video partners, but it may be too soon to determine what OTT video will mean to pay TV providers.

“Those operators that they signed up have made a pretty big commitment, so they are not going to just walk away,” Arnason said. “They are going to have to find that service from somewhere. They won’t have a choice; they’ll have to turn to somewhere.”