There hasn’t been much in the way of blockbuster IPTV news so far at GLOBALCOMM, but IPTV certainly is one of the overarching themes at the show. And vendors and service providers alike are using the show this week in Chicago as an opportunity to offer a status report on their products and services.
Of course, much of the focus around IPTV in the United States has been on AT&T Inc. and its Project Lightspeed initiative, for which the industry has been waiting with baited breath to see a significant commercial rollout.
Chris Rice, executive vice president at AT&T, said the company is on schedule to do its commercial launch of Project Lightspeed by the end of this month in San Antonio, where it’s been in a controlled launch for a few months. Rice said AT&T will launch Lightspeed in 15 to 20 additional markets by the end of this year.
He added that the company is on the cusp of announcing an intelligent NID (iNID) for the deployment. That device would sit outside the home to terminate video and data traffic, and a residential gateway with 802.11n would sit inside the house. While Rice declined to provide the names of NID vendor candidates, Entone Technologies Inc. just last week unveiled its Crescendo iNID, which is expected to be commercially available in September.
AT&T is using MoCA technology for in-home networking today, Rice said, but HPNAv3 over twisted pair and 802.11n are where it’s planning to go on the long term, adding that HPNAv3 works well both for single-family homes as well as for multidwelling units, in which a cable company may own the in-building coax. HPNAv3 is integrated into the set-top boxes AT&T is using, he added.
The controlled launch is using release 1.0 of Microsoft’s IPTV middleware, offers four standard-definition streams, includes more than 200 channels of programming, video on demand, DVR-capable set-top boxes and 6mbps high-speed Internet access.
The commercial launch will employ release 1.1 of Microsoft’s IPTV middleware, which Rice said AT&T received in May. It also will support three standard-definition and one high-definition video stream, and will offer more than 200 channels. It further will include double the number of VoD options available during the controlled launch and provide the same high-speed Internet access. IMS-based VoIP will become part of the service starting in December, said Rice, adding that AT&T has not yet disclosed pricing for Lightspeed services.
While Rice said things have gone pretty smoothly for AT&T as it moves through its controlled tests and on to its commercial launch, one of the challenges was integrating the Microsoft software and other parts of the Lightspeed solution with two different iterations of set-top boxes. For the controlled launch, AT&T is using Tatung set-top boxes, but the commercial services will use Motorola Inc. and Scientific-Atlanta set-top boxes, which are based on STMicroelectronics and Sigma Design Inc. chips, respectively, he explained.
AT&T’s decision to use a combined fiber-to-the-curb/VDSL2 access network over which to deliver Project Lightspeed has elicited skepticism by some, who think it might not provide enough bandwidth on the long term. But Rice said AT&T still is comfortable with its access decision, explaining that at 2,500 feet it can get 30meg, and on shorter loops it can get beyond 50meg. Bonding the copper for even higher capacity also is an option in the future, he said.
In addition to the Lightspeed effort, Rice said AT&T this month or next will commercially launch throughout its DSL footprint a new hybrid DBS/DSL service called HomeZone, which uses a 2Wire box to deliver services within the consumer’s home. HomeZone will have a similar user interface look and feel to what’s being used for Lightspeed, said Rice, and “very comparable video quality.”
It will include the same channel options available today through EchoStar’s DISH, which is providing the DBS component of the service. And it will offer pay-per-view and VoD options, including a broad slate of selections AT&T will provide in collaboration with Akimbo. VoIP is not a feature of the HomeZone bundle.
Meanwhile, AT&T recently announced that it has partnered with satellite ISP Wildblue Communications to bring high-speed Internet access to rural areas not reached by its DSL services. Rice said that there are no plans to roll that service into a larger, triple-play bundle.
AT&T Inc. www.att.com
