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George Lopez Email
SVP Operations . The Switch
Barnstable Town, MA
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Employees:
183Revenue:
$40.3MAbout
Beers Enterprises, Inc. (BEI), a privately held company, owns and operates The Switch, the leading provider of customer-controlled video switching services throughout major media markets of the United States and in key international locations. Since its inception in 1991, The Switch has been embraced by the television marketplace for its technical innovation of direct customer control of switching and its business model of fixed monthly rental port charges, rather than the pay-per-switch charges traditional providers of switching services have imposed on their customers. In 2003, The Switch expanded its management ranks with the addition of David Anderson, CTO, and Peter Hartz, VP Sales. Through a joint-service-agreement (JSA) with Pacific Television Center (PacTV), BEI launched ‘The LA Switch’ to offer the entertainment capital of the world a much-needed alternative to the manual, legacy switching system of the telephone company. The Switch deployed a next generation digital router and a simple customer control system, utilizing touch-screen computers that access a secure web-based control platform. In 2004 and early 2005, The Switch commenced digital switching in NY, offering seamless interoperability between digital and analog users and implemented the new touch-screen computer web-based control system. In that same year, Ed Rawls joined as Director of Operations. In September of 2005, BEI began offering a new service called, Inter-City on Demand, or ICOD. A separate service offering from BEI’s port rental business, ICOD was a “breakthrough” in the business of transmitting television signals between cities. ICOD features a “do-it-yourself’” approach, with no advance booking requirement and no minimum connection times. Users pay for ICOD services on a per-minute basis. ICOD paths are available between all cities of The Switch. Any customer that rents a port from The Switch has instant access to this service. In 2006, BEI launched ‘The DC Switch’ through a JSA with Eurovision offering the nation’s capital the ability to rent ports on a digital community router designed for HD-SDI, enabling both High-Definition and Standard Definition digital switching. Also in 2006, BEI acquired operational control of ‘The Miami Switch’ and Rick Behar joined as VP Sales, Miami. The Switch began the deployment of the computer control system and converted all customers to digital service in early 2007. In 2007, a reservations system was introduced allowing customers to book feeds both in advance and in The Switch’s traditional on-demand format. Additionally, The Switch expanded its video network between Los Angeles and New York, lighting a 2.5-gigabit wave with Net Insight DTM OC-48 equipment to provide 13 duplex paths between cities further lowering The Switch’s per-minute pricing. In 2008, BEI launched its first international location with ‘The London Switch,’ providing the UK industry with the first HD-SDI capable video switching service featuring customer control. Available to all customer of The Switch via ICOD, London serves as a gateway for broadcasters to the rest of Europe. In 2009, BEI launched ‘The Toronto Switch’ offering Canada both The Switch’s customer control service platform as well as access to all U.S. locations of The Switch via ICOD. Also, in 2009, The Switch upgraded their fiber network between LA and NY to an OC-192, allowing The Switch to begin offering, as part of its ICOD service, the ability to pass Uncompressed High Definition signals between the cities of New York, Los Angeles, and Miami. In 2010, The Switch officially announced, in an agreement with AT&T, the ability to offer High-Definition circuits to broadcasters at cost-effective rates to the industry. This allowed The Switch to play a vital role in speeding up the transition to High Definition television across the industry. Also in 2010, The Switch signed an agreement with Verizon to act as an underlying provider of transport services of Verizon, providing The Switch the ability to offer High-Definition 1.485 Gbps, HD/SDI and Standard Definition 270 Mbps SDI local fiber circuits in the Verizon service areas of New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Washington, D.C., and West Virginia. In 2011, The Switch officially announced they plan to roll out an additional 44 cities to a 50 city network across North America and the United Kingdom. In addition to the new cities brought online, The Switch network will be capable of transmitting in Uncompressed 3G*, Uncompressed High Definition and Uncompressed 270 Mbps SDI. *Subject to local circuit availability.The Switch Address
60 Hudson StBarnstable Town, MA
United States