Video was among the especially eye-catching topics this week at SUPERCOMM.
Of course, the biggest announcement in that space was probably SBC Communications Inc.’s announcement of a potential five-year, $6 billion investment in fiber-to-the-node technology and related announcement that it’s chosen Microsoft’s IPTV platform for video elivery.
Also at the show, Microsoft and Lucent Technologies announced an MoU to integrate Microsoft TV’s IPTV software platform with Lucent solutions. The goal is to better enable providers to add digital TV offerings to their broadband service suite. The collaboration will enable delivery of both standard and high-definition TV as well as on-demand programming to Microsoft TV’s IPTV-based set-top box via the Lucent Stinger IP-enabled DSLAM and Lucent ADSL2+ modem.
Microsoft TV offers an end-to-end solution that begins with the software in the set-top box and ends with the headend, says Ed Graczyk, director of marketing for Microsoft TV. “And with SBC as our first U.S. customer, that’s always big,” he says. “That’s encouraging for IPTV and good for the industry and good for consumers.”
Myrio Corp. is another SUPERCOMM vendor focused on video. The company provides software, content and integration services for video over IP and claims to be the first company to provide a turnkey IPTV solution in North America. The company had its own customer announcement at the show with Pioneer Telephone Cooperative, the third largest telephone cooperative in the United States, selecting Myrio’s IP video platform for its deployment of IPTV in 30 counties in Oklahoma.
In addition, Myrio is working in trials with Tier 1 carriers in North America and Europe.
“The IOCs, even larger ones like CenturyTel, will tell you [telco TV] viable,” says Kelly Smith, vice president of business development for Myrio. “If you talk to an RBOC, they would probably tell you that without a doubt…IPTV is part of its future. They will be careful in the technology selection, however, because they want the service to be robust and reliable,” he says. “I’d be very surprised if anyone was calling IPTV a passing trend today. That may have been true last year, but not today.”
