On Friday, rumors were once again spreading about AT&T’s possible acquisition of EchoStar Communications.  Analysts are buzzing. Investors are raising the price of EchoStar’s stock (almost 7% on Friday).

This comes after EchoStar acquired Sling Media for $380 million. almost two weeks ago. And after announcing it wanted to split into two separate public companies.

Oppenheimer analyst Thomas Eagan said:

Unlike EchoStar’s Dish Network service, AT&T’s internet television service, U-Verse has failed to gain considerable traction with consumers. Eagan said the U-Verse rollout has been grossly over-budget and behind schedule.

“Given the lack of success of AT&T’s U-Verse rollout, it seems to us a matter of when, NOT if, AT&T acquires EchoStar,” said Eagan. According to Eagan, the telecommunications giant would be willing to shell out a hefty premium for the company. He predicts that AT&T will pay shareholders more than $56 a share.

Rumors about AT&T acquiring EchoStar have been around for years. But could it be time? The addition of Sling would be a great win for AT&T and would possibly accelerate Sling’s integration with AT&T’s U-Verse IPTV offering.

[From Rocky Mountain News]

Technorati Tags: EchoStar, Sling Media, Sling, AT&T

Popularity: 19% [?]

A brand new peer-to-peer company called Oversi announced that it received funding from Cisco, totaling $8 million. Other investors include Carmel Ventures, StageOne Ventures and TempoPark Fund.

Now here’s the interesting thing: It’s impossible to know what Oversi is really doing. The press release talked about peer to peer streaming and caching. Their website was equally vague. The title bar on their website says “P2P Caching for ISPs”.

The ‘About Us” page says this:

Oversi offers innovative solutions for P2P networks in today’s fast-growing Internet TV and video age. Oversi’s solutions enable ISPs to optimize their network performance, ease P2P traffic pressure and save on bandwidth. The same Oversi platform also helps ISPs to increase revenues and enhance user stickiness through new value-added-services, such as premium content delivery and online storage.

The press release says that using Oversi’s P2P solutions, “service providers can deliver up to 20 times more bandwidth using their existing infrastructures, instead of investing billions of dollars in expensive upgrades.”

Lots of PR gobbledy-gook. For a better explanation, here’s what Light Reading had to say:

Here’s how it works: Oversi’s servers, or peers, form a grid in the operator’s network, catching and caching any video content that is transported in a P2P format (like BitTorrent). Every time a user downloads a P2P file, pieces of that file are stored at Oversi’s servers. When another user on the network requests the same file, it’s accessed from Oversi “peers” close by rather than from the far-away server where the file originated, which would eat more bandwidth and take longer.

Seems like Oversi is good at attracting investors, however. In December, the company had its second round funding for $6 million. That’s $14 million in just about 7 months.

Popularity: 17% [?]

JumpTV, a Toronto-based Internet streaming provider said it raised about $100 million in an an offering of shares on London’s Alternative Investments Market (AIM).

The company is a syndicator of TV programming from 250 channels and 70 countries. JumpTV does not have any content providers in the U.S.

From the JumpTV website:

Our Partners’ channels are available on the JumpTV network to viewers from around the world through an ordinary broadband Internet connection on their home computers, laptops, Internet-enabled televisions and mobile devices.

The JumpTV experience with a high-speed connection (Cable, ADSL, DSL or ISDN) will allow you to receive a picture at up to 30 frames per second, which is comparable to conventional television.

Well, well, 30 frames per second. That’s definitely possible, depending on the speed of the connection and the size of the video window. Still, it sounds like marketing hype.

The company says that each channel is offered as a monthly subscription for about $9.95 each, with package deals starting at $19.95.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Anystream, a provider of streaming video technology, announced that it closed $7 million in its third round of financing. The round was led by SoftBank Capital and SCP Partners. and the company will use the money to increase sales in the media and education sectors.

Anystream said it is working with major universities such as the University of Pennsylvania and Temple, to provide online lectures.

In October 2006, Anystream announced its Apreso Coursecaster a hardware appliance that can capture rich media lectures for on-demand viewing.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Brightcove announced that it has raised $59.5 million in its third round of financing. Brightcove provides Internet TV services for customers such as Discovery, Dow Jones, MTV, The New York Times Company, Reuters, Sony BMG and Warner Music Group.

Popularity: 9% [?]