IPTV?what is it?

Telcos Prep for IPTV Play



this is a glance about the theme i would like to talk about!f it was correct, wait to hear more about it!



A flood of ventures by telephone companies designed to compete against entrenched cable TV operators received much fanfare in the early 1990s, only to fizzle out as failures before the new millennium passed.
But don't count them out just yet. As cable operators increasingly target their data and voice customers, the telephone companies are crawling back from defeat, reinvigorated by a perfect storm of network convergence, broadband technology and the good ol' IP infrastructure.
Coming soon to a screen near you: IPTV.
"It's one of the hot topics in telecommunications," said Steve West, director of product marketing for fixed solutions at Alcatel, a network infrastructure provider. "We've been actively pushing the space since 1999 or 2000. It is absolutely ready for market."
While traditional cable systems devote a slice of bandwidth for each channel and then cablecast them all out at once, IPTV uses a "switched video" architecture in which only the channel being watched at that moment is sent over the network, freeing up capacity for other features and more interactivity.
"The real advantage is that it's very bandwidth-efficient," said Gary Arlen, president of Arlen Communications in Bethesda, Maryland. "It's catering to the on-demand future, which is what TV will be."
Arlen said other interactive applications, such as multiplayer gaming through a set-top box, work "best in an IP network."
In the United States, big telephone companies like SBC Communications, BellSouth and Verizon Communications plan to start launching IPTV systems as early as this year. But their strategies vary.
For example, Verizon plans to adopt a hybrid model combining traditional cable and IPTV technologies while SBC and BellSouth want to launch full-fledged IPTV networks.
"The IPTV platform allows for very compelling future features that will help us deliver a better TV experience," said SBC spokesman Marty Richter. "It can change the way customers watch TV."

http://www.wired.com/