IP-TV Coming But When?
Wired News has a story on how the telcos are gearing up to offer IP-TV as a way to even the triple-play battle field with the cablecos. IPTV, in theory, will be a wonderful service - well, it could be as good as cable - but when it will be launched on a commercial basis it still unclear. Swisscom has delayed its launch while Telstra has backed away from the concept. During a conference call yesterday with analysts, Bell Canada danced around a question of how its IPTV plans were coming along. Pierre Blouin, who leads Bell's consumer business, talked about how tests with Microsoft were going on in the lab, how Bell is working with other telcos and how they're all in the same boat. There was nothing specific, however, about trials or a launch date. The fact IPTV technology is still mired in pilot mode around the world but has yet to see a commercial launch may suggest the telcos are having tough time putting the different technology together to make IPTV work. It may be Microsoft's software or Alcatel's hardware or another part the system. Still, the more time telcos take moving into the TV business, the bigger advantage the cablecos have to establish a foothold in telephony.
Addendum: It has been accurately pointed out Manitoba Tel and SaskTel are offering digital TV. What's interesting is they aren't using Microsoft software to do it - unlike the plans of Bell, BT, Verizon and SwissCom. It will be interesting to see how Siemens' software is accepted given Microsoft's apparent growing pains in TV.
August 4th, 2005 at 9:57 am
Mark, you need to look to the north for that answer. See MTS Alstreams in Winnipeg.
August 4th, 2005 at 10:18 am
IP-TV Coming But When? September 2002, in Regina, followed by the rest of Sasktel's DSL footprint; brief discussion of the architecture here. June 21, 2005 in Halifax, via Aliant. I believe TELUS is trialling the service with employees (company directors are reimbursed) using Alcatel boxes.
I see two misconceptions emerging here.
One is that IPTV is a Microsoft thing. It's not, although MS is one of the providers competing in segments of this space.
The other is that IPTV is a big deal. It's not. Kind of like VoIP, encoding with IP is interesting for engineers, but doesn't really change much for the end-user. The big deal is Internet TV — a nomadic service which actually uses the Internet (a mixed traffic environment) so that you can use TV services over your Internet connection.
That's further off as a mainstream product, but it'd be interesting to see how folks like JumpTV and Akimbo — you blogged about one of their Canadian resellers, BroadbandTV — are doing.
August 4th, 2005 at 10:35 am
I wouldn't compare IPTV to VoIP as nomadic VoIP services such as Vonage are very significant - they break the link between geography (and therefore the wire that comes into your home) and service provider. You can have a local Vancouver number in Toronto (or even in Mumbai) and that is groundbreaking. IPTV the way that the ILECs envision it is no different from cable cos offering POTS or VoIP telephone but only within their geographic area and over their lines.
As was mentioned above what we need to see, particularly in Canada, is TV over internet so that Canadians can subscribe to HBO and have it delivered over the net. You could watch over your PC or someone could make an STB, just like current cable or sat STB s, that interface bewteen the net and your Home Theatre setup. However to get HD content would likely require a bit more bandwidth than what is currently available and you would need to be able to sustain 5-10 Mbps over the entire path from content provider to STB.