VideoTele.com adds switched Gig E to video line

VideoTele.com has expanded its Astria digital headend platform to support switched Gigabit Ethernet end-to-end IP video delivery over a variety of platforms and open up yet another way for telephone operators and utilities to deliver video.

The Gigabit Ethernet component adds ammunition to VideoTele.com’s video arsenal by opening ways for other networks to carry video programming, said CTO Chuck Van Dusen, who called it “an indicator of our continued expansion to be access network neutral and protocol neutral.”

The IP component, Van Dusen said, “lets the service provider determine their architecture independent of their ability to deliver video, whether that would be IP, IP-over-ATM or ATM. Depending on what platform is already in place, he may choose one path over the other. We have the ability to source our content through any of those eventual access network topologies.”

Pure IP, of course, is more relevant for service providers that have pushed fiber deep into the network because it lowers the cost of equipment implementation and lowers bandwidth costs.

Many carriers are still working with legacy ATM networks, including in some cases, IP-over-ATM, because those offer quality-of-service features not yet available on IP, but that’s changing said Van Dusen, and pure-IP migration is emerging. Nevertheless, he said, it’s unlikely that traditional telco players will be the first to adopt the Gigabit Ethernet component.

“We see the pure IP to be fiber-centric-like utility companies,” Van Dusen said. “The utilities seem to be the early adopters of fiber-based IP networks.”

At the same time, he added, larger carriers are strategically aligned to passive optical networking, with a potential goal of using IP or ATM.

Either way, Van Dusen said, “we have products that support both.”

VideoTele.com maintains a focus on “entertainment quality video delivery. We’re talking about MPEG-2 video to the home television,” he said.

And now that delivery includes end-to-end IP.