Tier 3 Venus Telephone Corporation will be offering its customers an alternative to its current ATM-based video services when it rolls out a hybrid offering from Skitter.TV in February.
The western Pennsylvania-based telco said it wanted to offer its 1,276 customers a hybrid OTT/IPTV solution in addition to the traditional IPTV platform it already was in the process of implementing.
"We had previously selected a traditional IPTV service, but over-the-top video is a compelling solution that wasn't available from the vendor we selected," said Tim Keister, head-end manager for Venus Telephone. "In our rural service area, we have enjoyed very loyal TV service customers, but over the last several months, we too have begun to see cord-cutting. With Skitter's hybrid OTT/IPTV solution, we can offer an alternative TV package at a very competitive price, with more features, while at the same time upgrading our existing TV service to HD."
In addition, Venus Telephone has selected Skitter's Acclaim Video Encoders as the encoding platform for a pending transition from ATM-based video services to IPTV in a separate offering.
"We looked at a few other encoding vendors, but we weren't happy with hardware performance and reliability," said Keister. "And we were also concerned about maintenance costs."
Keister said 30 to 40 percent of the telco's Internet traffic comes from streaming video today. Venus Telephone expects their Skitter.TV offering to help monetize their broadband service.
For more:
- see this release
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