EchoStar Satellite Services, a division of EchoStar Corporation (NASDAQ: SATS), now has an agreement to deliver its ViP-TV™ video transport service to the city of Ketchikan’s KPU Telecommunications, a provider of telecommunications and video services to a city of approximately 14,000 residents in Ketchikan, Alaska.
Taking advantage of EchoStar’s IP-Prime Conversion Program, KPU will receive transport of up to 42 popular HD TV channels to its IP headend. The city offers residents ultra high-speed broadband, TV services and Internet phone services and will be nearly 50 percent complete with its city-wide build out of fiber to the home at the end of this summer’s construction season. With the addition from EchoStar, Ketchikan will offer a total of 58 HD channels along with a suite of more than 140 SD TV channels. Commercial transport provider IP-Prime announced previously it is discontinuing its video transport service to telco facilities by July 31, 2009. EchoStar’s IP-Prime Conversion Program provides qualified customers with EchoStar’s ViP-TV transport service, replacement IDC satellite receivers and a standard professional installation, including a satellite dish re-point, cabling and connectors. EchoStar’s ViP-TV transport service is capable of delivering a secure, MPEG-4 encoded IP stream of approximately 275 channels of popular, broadcast-quality TV and music channels from a satellite located at 85 degrees W.L. ViP-TV can also provide satellite-delivered local TV channel aggregation in a telco’s designated market area in both HD and SD (where available).
