“But Liberty still has its hand on the service provider side of the fence, thanks to stakes in companies such as Jupiter Telecommunications Co. Ltd. in Japan, United GlobalCom, Liberty Cablevision of Puerto Rico and Telewest Communications in the U.K. Liberty Cablevision, for one, is deploying one of the most ambitious VoIP networks in the world with Net2Phone Inc., which also happens to be under the Liberty umbrella. “
CED BROADBAND 50:
Liberty Media Corp.
Active with content and iTV
cedmagazine.com
Although it backed out of the bidding for Vivendi Universal Entertainment, content is still king at Liberty Media.
But Liberty still has its hand on the service provider side of the fence, thanks to stakes in companies such as Jupiter Telecommunications Co. Ltd. in Japan, United GlobalCom, Liberty Cablevision of Puerto Rico and Telewest Communications in the U.K. Liberty Cablevision, for one, is deploying one of the most ambitious VoIP networks in the world with Net2Phone Inc., which also happens to be under the Liberty umbrella.
Liberty is also well positioned if interactive television finally takes off in the U.S. It owns all of Ascent Media Group and a good chunk of iTV software leader OpenTV Corp., which alone has software and services deployed in more than 48 million set-tops worldwide, about 20 million of those in the U.S.
What remains to be seen is how successful Liberty will be with its satellite broadband endeavors. The company has already scrapped an initial deal to restructure Astrolink International LLC, which originally planned to launch nine Ka-band satellites. Instead, Liberty–along with partners Intelsat and the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative–have put their money (about $156 million of it) toward another Ka-band-based startup, WildBlue Communications. That service is slated for launch in 2004.
[ahh, NTOP does do voIP via Ka-band satellite] |
