SBC puts some numbers behind IPTV trial

SBC today pulled another inch off the covers of its pending IPTV service, announcing that it has successfully completed a second field trial of the technology in 40 employee homes in San Antonio.

Speaking at an analysts conference sponsored by IBM, SBC’s Chief Information Officer Andy Geisse said the trials demonstrated that the technology works in real-world conditions.

IBM, which has previously stayed mostly in the background of such high-profile deployments, said it is providing servers for SBC’s Project Lightspeed. Those servers will play a key role in SBC’s plans including encryption of video and adding digital rights management to the stream. Additionally, SBC is working with IBM to develop a service delivery platform (SDP) that will be used to collect and aggregate transactions from the billing, customer relationship management, ordering and billing systems.

During SBC’s two-month trial, the carrier delivered linear programming, video on demand and high-speed Internet access over an IP connection to the employees’ homes. Geisse also reiterated the company’s intent to have service rolled out by the end of this year or very early next year with widespread deployment by mid-2006.

Last week during the Telecom 05 show in Las Vegas, the company defended its rollout plan, which has been the subject of plenty of speculation, as well as its decision to use a fiber-to-the-node architecture. During the San Antonio trial, the carriers used VDSL to get 20-25 megabits per second of bandwidth. That amount is enough to provide four streams of video (including one high-definition stream) per line, high-speed Internet access and, in the future, consumer VoIP service.

“While there is still work to be done, I’m encouraged by our fast progress and confident in our ability to scale this market-changing entertainment technology,” Geisse said in a prepared statement.