As satellite headend locations can be costly, many municipal and second tier operators cannot justify the investment in their own ground station to offer triple play features. However, it is possible for a larger provider or a cooperative of smaller providers to unite and provide a video headend. Each retail subscriber can purchase content from this single station, and receive it over IP. However, encryption is required so the signal cannot be understood if intercepted. A high speed encrypted tunnel is preferred over running two layers of double video protection which is cumbersome and computationally intensive.
Figure: Video wholesale configuration shows an example of video wholesale configuration.
Figure: Video wholesale configuration
