Have you heard of the new technology called IPTV?

In a nutshell IPTV is… taking the video stream and breaking it into ip packets simply put; IPTV is television being delivered through computer networking technologies. The leading proponents of IPTV are Telecommunications companies that are trying to reinvent themselves in the consumer’s eyes offering a new product choice while maintaining stiff competition with Cable companies. The main reason being is the continued loss of revenue. FCC Cable service studies show cable rates increased at more than 3.5 times the rate of inflation between 1998-2003 with continued increases predicted. IPTV maybe the saving grace to the dying dinosaurs that are Telco, a multimedia research group estimate IPTV subscribers to be 3.7 million in 2005 and growing globally to 36.9 million around the world with the European market leading the way in 2009. The industry’s revenue could reach nearly 10 billion US by that time –no small chunk of change. Still, the battle is for more than just your television; it’s for the single entry point into your home.

So now there is a very competitive market to get your money from both Cable and Telco’s both are offering bundled services for voice, video and data. The new buzzword is triple play Telephone, Internet and Television all on one bill and all from one company. One source for all your entertainment and communications needs with all the convenience of a one-stop shopping.

With so much at stake Telco’s such as SBC (now AT&T) have spent years and billions of dollars (Project light speed a $4 billion network upgrade) basically trying to imitate a Network that Comcast has already built. “ We’ve seen nothing we can’t exceed.” Said Andrew Johnson spokesman for Comcast. Despite the not so friendly reception by the Cable companies AT&T and Verizon are aggressively moving forward to support the triple play. One such program is AT&T U-verse, another is Verizon’s FiOS service.

Verizon which already is offering 300 channels via fiber to millions of homes is doing this by bringing fiber to fiber this allows for incredible bandwidth, permitting them to stream all channels at once, out of 4.5 gbps available the TV service will only use about 3.5gbps.

AT&T service U-verse is con- currently being tested in Texas and is ramping up for major rollout throughout the United States. Although both have similar product both deliver it in a very different way.

AT&T’s U-verse will use DSL to deliver the video feed it is a multicast system that is only able to deliver several channels at once so when you switch a channel from your home it will be redirected to local Telco’s office and then it will check to see if you are part of the IGMP v2 to join the multicast group. When the request is received it verifies that you are authorized to view the new channel, it then directs it to the routers to add the user to the channel’s distribution list. This assures only channels being viewed are sent from local office to DSLAM and onto to you the viewer.

So even amongst the Telco’s there is some friendly competition, different philosophy as what is the better way to provide this new service. If we look at the companies that seem to be the benefactor by AT&T’s venture the Fiber cable companies, hardware maker Alcatel, (inked a 1.7 billion deal) Microsoft being the major software for the backend of IPTV (400 million dollar deal) and yes finally the consumer. With different options of delivering all in one product there will be price wars and the consumer will have more than just the traditional choices.

So what’s next?

Has anyone heard of a little thing called Ethernet over power lines?

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