A spokesman for Echostar confirmed today that Echostar will be shutting down ViP-TV, its wholesale IPTV MPEG-4 transport offering, within “the next couple of months.”
“Looking at the business environment, we decided to terminate the service,” the spokesman told Telecompetitor.
Customers have been notified, he said, and “we are talking to them on a case-by-case basis” about other options, which he declined to detail. The company does not envision a “one-thing-fits-all” solution, he said. Telecompetitor has learned that Echostar is sending letters to ViP-TV customers, informing them the service will begin shutting down on August 24th, with the service ending entirely on September 30th.
ViP-TV was launched in 2007 with the goal of enabling smaller network operators, including rural telcos, the ability to offer an IPTV powered multichannel subscription video offer to their customers using a DSL or FTTH broadband network. In 2009, Echostar put in place a program to convert service providers from IP-Prime when that company discontinued a similar offering. With ViP-TV gone, the only remaining IP/MPEG-4 video transport option is Avail-TVN. Comcast Media Center provides similar services with their HITS platform, but not with IP/MPEG-4 video.
ViP-TV secured a variety of customers and resellers of the service over the past few years, including Canby Telcom, Citizens Cablevision, BTC Broadband, MegaHertz, Transparent Technologies, Pace International and Fidelity Solutions, and Rural Cable.
Telecompetitor has not noted any new sign-ups for VIP-TV for over a year.
45 days Echostar?
Yet another IP video transporter gone. What's the deal?
From Avail-TVN's perpective, the market for IPTV solutions remains strong. We're focused on this business and continue to support our growing base of customers, and now former ViP affiliates, with new MPEG-4 IPTV offerings.This is our core business with linear, VOD and PPV. If it isn't your core business, you may make different decisions.
And then there was one
isn't it ironic that echostar pursued those telcos that got burned by IP Prime shutting down, and then a couple years later, they do the exact same thing
Don't understand how they are working with individual companies when the Senior VP that sent the fax letter won't return any of my calls. I have tried to reach him three times yesterday and got no return call. And, I suspect all of the other companies that are impacted are experienceing the same thing. Echo Star has not given companies time to purchase new equipment or make the change in vendors. Customers and companies that trusted Echo Star will be hurt.
Keith
Give us a call and we'll help you through a managed transition. And we'll also lay out the path to a TV Everywhere future that will allow you to aggressively compete in the years ahead
Jim Riley
818.295.4500
Hope Avail-TVN will offer Jewelry Television as part of their SD & HD offering. Operators need the extra revenue and viewers the value proposition.
With all due respect to jewelry tv, this is a great example of why this business is broken and perhaps a contributing factor to vip shutting down. We're being forced to carry all these niche channels – which very few people want, causing all costs to rise, with little corresponding revenue. Carrying channels like this means we have to build more expensive capacity and charge customers more, making the video business too tough to make any money with. If no one is making money (except the programmers), there's not enough business for someone like a vip.
Sam, you hit the nail squarely on the head.
The 1980s-1990 cable model is broken, and there are so many cable and iPTV companies refusing to acknowledge the radical shift in customer needs and wants. The old days of the race to a zillion channels or a zillion HD channels ain't were the market is going. Consumers are demanding smaller, more affordable, more viewer-interest centric packages. I am amused at all the announcements that this transport carrier or content aggregator is adding 8 more dismal low interest channels to their line up like it is something to be proud of in their carriage packages.
If I were one of those satellite transport companies, I would be worried when 3-D comes out as a defacto standard in 5 to 10 years. Talk about a bandwidth hog? The compression standard should be at MPEG16 about then to carry the bandwidth. I wonder how long before the content guys get their head's up and beging allowing terresterial feeds over all this huge intercity fiber networks that are sitting just idling waiting for some true bandwidth demand.