In the wake of EchoStar’s announcement this week of a proposed acquisition of Sling Media, it is unclear how the deal might affect services such as AT&T’s Homezone that are offered in partnership with EchoStar. But the growing influence of Sling’s technology in the IPTV space could have long-term consequences for a wide range of broadband providers.

Slingbox “place-shifts” video streams, allowing consumers to transmit television signals to other devices (nearby or remotely) using existing broadband connections. This year the company promised to eventually add a hosted Web service called “Clip + Sling” that would allow users to share video clips with others.

So far, it’s been a niche application without major consequence in the IPTV space, according to Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research. “While there’s a lot of industry enthusiasm about it, one can see from its sales that there’s not a large degree of pent-up consumer demand for it.”

“In the short-term, [the acquisition] gives EchoStar an interesting consumer device to differentiate its service from other video providers,” said Vince Vittore, senior analyst for Yankee Group. “Combine EchoStar's existing [set-top box] with Sling's software and you come up with a compelling STB that lets any service provider offer both place-shifting and time-shifting of video content. This isn't going to happen tomorrow or probably any time in the next six months, but it's out there as a possibility.”

The adoption of Sling (as part of EchoStar) and similar place-shifters by major service providers may force a greater focus among carriers on upstream broadband speeds, Vittore added. That’s because video viewed remotely via Slingbox is uploaded from users’ home broadband connections. Sling officially recommends giving its box a minimum of 256 kb/s upstream bandwidth, and some reviewers have recommended as much as 384 kb/s.

“Carriers need to monetize their upstream paths,” Vittore said. “Slingboxes put a lot of data on the upstream path and force service providers to pay attention to what has traditionally been a forgotten asset.”