Amino Active in "Blooming" US IPTV Market : Interview with Rick Sailor, VP of Sales, Americas

Cavalier Telephone announced at TelcoTV’05 the first all-MPEG-4 IPTV deployment in the United States with Amino, utilising the AmiNET124. Cavalier will have one of the largest mid-Atlantic broadband TV networks, which will entail a full suite of video products to customers beginning in Richmond this December. 

The service offering called Cavalier Broadband TV will allow users to receive 150 digital video and music channels, a fully featured interactive program guide, on-screen caller ID, and digital set top boxes.

As provider of the set-top box for the Cavalier Broadband TV solution, Rick Sailor, VP of Sales, Americas for Amino outlined; "The US market is definitely blooming from the smaller tier 3 companies, to the tier 2 in 2006 – and as you are probably aware, the tier 1 companies are also looking at getting into IPTV. We have grown our business significantly in 2005, and we’ll be looking to multiply that number of deployed set-top boxes in 2006 again.

Currently most of the operators are doing MPEG-2 deployments, with standard definition, and they are looking towards MPEG-4 and HD next year. Our PVR is just being deployed, as two of the leading middleware providers in the US, Minerva and Myrio, have just completed porting their PVR application on top of our software stack.

We see home networking as being a critical component for not only IPTV set-top box deployments, but for future revenue generating offerings as well. For example, security systems with remote cameras, or different appliances being plugged into the home Ethernet network. IPTV is just one of the functions in this home network.

Currently we have a couple of network adapters available, the SmartFoot by Ready Links and the TVnet/AC by Coaxsys, that allow for an IP solution to work over existing coax cables eliminating the need for re-wiring the home. They both are a very elegant plug and play solution.

We are also looking at other alternatives, such as Ethernet over the AC powerline, or somewhere down the road Ethernet over a wireless connection. The key issue is to make all the data packets available throughout the home, HD video everywhere and future exciting applications such as VOD, gaming, other IP services that a customer may want to select, choose and purchase. The challenge we are developing solutions for is to allow operators to deploy IPTV services to more homes per day, by reducing the total installation time per home at an affordable price that makes business sense.

A PVR set-top box also increases the service offerings available to an IPTV deployment with its ability to store content locally, which allows the operator to deliver content outside of viewing hours, and possibly at lower than real-time speeds, for later viewing - an example of this is 'Push VOD'. The Ethernet network is a transport path to get those videos shared throughout the home.

There is strong market traction for the one-bill solution that will enable the service providers with IPTV to compete with older RF style cable TV operators. A lot of service providers in the US are trying to tie together their local POTS service, long distance service, high speed internet and this new video service into one price saving package for the customer. This will enable these service providers to reduce costs, offer new or additional price saving packages as required to reduce customer churn and prevent losing any more revenues".

For more information about Amino please visit http://www.aminocom.com

For more information about Cavalier Telecom please visit http://www.cavtel.com