SBC awarded a $195 million, multi-year contract to Scientific-Atlanta to provide IP-based video equipment for Project Lightspeed in its 13-state service area. Scientific-Atlanta will supply IP video equipment for an IP video operations center (VOC), two national IP video super hub offices (SHO) and 41 IP video hub offices (VHO). Scientific-Atlanta will provide encoders, satellite dishes, video routers, and professional services as part of the contract. Scientific-Atlanta will also provide professional services related to the initial design and builds of the VOC, SHOs and VHOs.
The IP video operations center will serve as a command center, monitoring the availability and quality of all of the content traveling through SBC’s network using Scientific-Atlanta’s ROSA Element Manager system. The super hub offices (SHOs) receive, process, and encode video and TV programming from satellite feeds into IP packets. This content is then sent to the video hub offices (VHOs), typically one per major metropolitan area, via SBC’s national IP-based network. In the VHOs are servers that have the electronic intelligence necessary to deliver IP video-on-demand, over-the-air TV programming, interactive applications, etc. The VHOs will also acquire and encode local video content.
SBC described the contract as another major step forward for Project Lightspeed, which is slated to begin delivering services under the U-verse brand in late 2005 or early 2006.http:/www.sbc.com
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- In November 2004, SBC announced a $400 million, 10-year agreement with Microsoft to provide next-generation television services using the new Microsoft IPTV Edition software platform.
- In October 2004, SBC announced a five-year, approximately $1.7 billion primary supplier agreement with Alcatel to provide network equipment and video system integration services for Project Lightspeed. Alcatel’s network equipment includes core network access, aggregation and switching equipment platforms that will provide the Internet Protocol, packet-based network technologies that connect the customers to the video hub offices. Additionally, Alcatel will work with SBC – and now Scientific-Atlanta – to ensure seamless video systems integration.