AT&T Inc. may be scaling back a bit on deployment timelines for its U-verse residential fiber service, but the carrier is banking its IPTV success on the ability to stalk customers with broadband and blended applications, wherever they are.
U-verse is a triple play, of course, with voice, Internet and television. And AT&T now plans to pass 30 million living units with the U-Verse fiber network by the end of 2011 — that’s one year later than previously planned. Analysts have speculated that the economic recession might be to blame for the holdup. Or, maybe it’s because cablecos are starting to roll out 50mbps tiers while testing 100mbps — speeds that AT&T cannot match right now, analysts argue, meaning it will need to make additional investment in the network in order to get there.
But the future of its IPTV business hinges not just on offering the basics in volume (though it added 284,000 U-verse subscribers in the first quarter, ahead of analysts’ estimates). Nor does it hinge on simply on higher speeds. No, for AT&T beating the formidable, entrenched threat of the cablecos and satellite providers is about living up to the network’s name — to become a universe of communications wherever a subscriber is, in a way the others can’t execute.
It’s a lofty goal, but the key is leveraging IP and AT&T’s mobile footprint to deliver interesting revenue-generating services and ubiquitous video at a lower cost per bit and with minimal network and back-office adjustments. “IP is the future, and I think this enables a lot for the living room but it’s just as important outside the home and on the go,” explained Jeff Weber, vice president of video products at AT&T. “This is the core of the roadmap and the capability we want to deliver — the idea of content across the devices, in an easy way for the consumer to use.”
Blended Services
Achieving this world domination-ish goal of being all communications to all people (well, within its local footprint anyway) is a function of two efforts: the creation of blended services, and the seamless addition of mobile broadband to the mix.
As to the former, the carrier has already done a lot of cross-integration between its lines of business, and will continue to do so. “Certainly this is an evolution,” said Weber. “We started by creating an integration on our IP platform between the TV and the Web portal to make those systems talk to each other. But there’s always more that can be done, and the thing is, IP can enable virtually anything.”
