Chicken Little

In another life, more than 10 years ago, I started up and operated a bulletin board service for the telecom industry. Nod your head if you remember those. The process was pure geek heaven. I learned an obscure programming language that is of absolutely no use today, I spent way too much company money on a consultant who was just as clueless as me, and the whole thing collapsed when the company refused to buck up more cash for the essential "doors," early precursors to hyperlinks, to tie into other telecom BBSs.

Unplugging that board was difficult. Beyond having to admit failure, what scared me more at the time was the thought that perhaps the industry wasn't quite ready to communicate via their PCs. Looking back on more than a decade of Internet development, it's easier to put things in perspective.

Over the last several weeks, there has been a lot of open discussion about the readiness of the industry to move into (pick your favorite term) triple play/IPTV/telco video/telco TV. It started at Supercomm when SBC answered critics by insisting that it will develop a video service that is clearly different and better than cable.

More recently, The Diffusion Group put out a report say that perhaps it was time for telcos to rethink their technology plans for video. The report was prompted in part by numerous reports that Telstra had decided not to move forward with a trial of Microsoft TV's platform. The vendor denied that it had ever been as deeply involved in deployment with the Australian carrier as it has been with the likes of SBC and Swisscom.

In many ways, this time period of IPTV is much like the days when the Internet was still largely the domain of universities. At the time, there were vigorous debates over how free the Net should be--many claimed that when services such as Compuserv (nod again if you remember their dominance) took over, all hell would break loose with commercial interests stamping out all free thought.

The sky is not falling on IPTV. It's a new technology that is going to experience plenty of hiccups along the way. So while pundits, analysts and those of us who make noise for a living can decry the "slow" pace of deployment, it's helpful to think more long term. As noted in an Ovum report that hit the wires this week, telcos getting into the video business have to do no less than transform their DNA. It's a long process and one that won't be easy. But it's also a transition that most will be forced to make.

E-mail me at vvittore@primediabusiness.com