I have spoken with a colleague in the industry regarding 4com. Apparently, they have been able to acquire some sort of pass-through licensing on much of the content, but I have not spoken directly with 4com. I heard the same of Broadstream and SES Americom, but both proved to be more of an aid in acquisition, and not outright pass- through rights. VoD is one of the main drivers, along with HD, but neither are a full- service alone. Consumers will demand linear programming. They have become accustomed to it. More importantly, the advertisers have become accustomed to it. Gian Anthony Constantine Senior Network Design Engineer Earthlink, Inc. On Jan 12, 2007, at 5:29 PM, Michael Painter wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: Gian Constantine Sent: Friday, January 12, 2007 5:24 AM Subject: Re: Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a day, continuously?
Yes, the NCTC. I have spoken with two of the vendors you mentioned. Neither have pass-through licensing rights. I still have to go directly to most of the content providers to get the proper licensing rights. There are a few vendors out there who will help a company attain these rights, but the solution is not turnkey on licensing. To be clear, it is not turnkey for the major U.S. content providers.<<
Back in the 'day', these folks were great to work with, but I have no idea of how they would deal with "IPTV". http://www.4com.com/Company-Profile.html
Btw, I thought VoD was one of the main drivers of IPTV, at the local level at least.
--Michael