SkyStream pushes video over telco networks

SkyStream Networks doesn’t care that some experts have put video over ADSL on the backburner. The digital media delivery technology vendor today is announcing an all-inclusive platform that carries the video-over-ADSL banner.

The new technology, a router that massages and delivers advanced video services to the DSLAM, can go over fiber, over copper-based DSL, Ethernet or ATM,” said Bethany Mayer, SkyStream’s vice president of product marketing.

The target audience, she said, is “ILECs, RBOCs, and we’re working with small rural independent service providers and some overbuilders that are doing fiber to homes/small businesses.”

SkyStream has partnered with systems integrators Sony Electronics and Imagine Broadband, and has used satellite and cable video delivery background to add conditional access encryption to the video streams.

“For the first time, the content provider will be assured that their content will be encrypted not only as it goes down the pipe but as it sits on a set-top box,” said Mayer, noting that SkyStream’s initial boxes will be built by Sigma Designs, although “there are a number of others that we interoperate with.”

The product also handles bandwidth-hungry high-definition signals, removing a major barrier to video deployment over ADSL networks, Mayer said.

A primary drawback to delivering video over ADSL networks had been the need for providers to take source material directly from satellite or terrestrial reception and push it over a very narrow bandwidth space. SkyStream overcomes this by transrating, or real-time reducing, video bit rates to fit multiple video streams on a standard ADSL line.

Although the product is being trialed with various levels of services providers, “the faster-moving folks are the rural and small independent services providers. They’re ready to go. They have money to spend, and they want to deploy these services,” Mayer said.

The bigger players, she said, are still 18 to 24 months from any serious incursion into the video space. In both cases, she concluded, “there is a tremendous interest in video-over-IP.”