Microsoft opens up TV vault to telcos

CHICAGO--

Microsoft TV, making its first appearance at Supercomm, announced an alliance with Lucent Technologies under which the traditional telecom vendor will make its DSL product line compatible with Microsoft's IPTV platform.

The IPTV platform, which includes acquisition, encoding, management and delivery elements, is not complete yet but with customers like SBC, Microsoft plans to add a number of pieces specific to the telco environment. That completed product will hit the market next year.

“The concept is that for a fixed price, we can go from concept to hundreds of customers and up to 1000 [for early test deployments],” said Ed Graczyk, director of marketing for Microsoft TV. “The goal with these early adopters is to work with them to finish the product. There are a number of telcos that have signed on but have not gone public.”

The agreement with Lucent gives Microsoft not only leverage with the largest telcos, but also a test partner for new services. At Supercomm, the companies are running a demo of high-definition TV over a Lucent Stinger DSLAM and into a Lucent CellPipe ADSL 2+ modem. The company also has signed agreements with Juniper Networks and Tandberg Television.

Many of the services the software giant is targeting to the telco TV market will involve in-home applications such as digital photo uploads and sharing of stored video.

“The real value for telcos comes in the realization that with IPTV, your TV becomes and endpoint in the connected home,” Graczyk said.