Intelsat Announces Successful IP Multicast Video Streaming Field Trial

Business Wire, Sept 19, 2001

Business Editors/Hi-Tech Writers

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 19, 2001

Intelsat announced today that it has successfully completed an IP multicast video streaming field trial, enabling many clients to be connected by a single stream and achieving significant efficiencies in satellite and terrestrial bandwidth.

The trial was conducted over Intelsat's satellite system between the Communications Authority of Thailand (CAT) and Verestar, a global communications solutions provider.

The field trial took place 15 May to 14 June on the Intelsat 802 satellite at 174E. Verestar's Brewster, Washington teleport in the U.S. served as the hub, with an outbound 4 Mbit/s IDR carrier, and CAT acted as one of the receiving ends, using a 128 kbit/s IDR return satellite channel from Thailand.

Two different streaming systems -- Cachestream and Infolibria -- were tested over a common IP multicast distribution platform.

This trial demonstrated the efficiencies that satellites can achieve by transmitting multicast streams to multicast-enabled terrestrial networks. "This trial was a very significant demonstration of the ability of satellites to move content to the edge of the network, bypass congestion and efficiently interface with terrestrial facilities," said Dr. Kittin Udomkiat, Senior Executive Vice President, CAT.

The multicast network was extended into CAT's terrestrial network traveling over six hops and including five routers and five separate LANs, all running protocol independent multicast - sparse mode (PIM-SM). This enabled many clients to be connected by a single stream, which achieved significant efficiencies in satellite and terrestrial bandwidth.

The main objectives of the trial were achieved, including: field verification of equipment and system functionality; operational experience for system integration with terrestrial facilities; assessment of system stability and overall quality necessary for future commercial deployment.

Some of the technical elements addressed in the trial were: video on demand, multicast to unicast conversion, digital rights management, low and high bit rate encoding streams, long term stability of continuous video streaming, router multicasting capabilities and real-time encoding.

John Stanton, President of Intelsat Global Sales & Marketing Limited, commented, "This field trial, once again, proved the cost-efficiencies which the natural broadcasting and multicasting abilities of satellites can provide. The productive collaborative efforts in testing these new capabilities will give us reliable information when assessing potential future services, and will help us assist our customers in providing more advanced applications to their own users."

About Intelsat

Intelsat is a privately held international communications provider offering Internet, broadcast, telephony and corporate network solutions around the globe through its fleet of 20 satellites.

For nearly four decades, leading telecommunications companies, multinational corporations and broadcasters in more than 200 countries and territories have relied on Intelsat satellites and staff for quality connections, global reach and reliability. For more information, visit www.intelsat.com.