What I learned at TelcoTV

Conflicted is suddenly the word that comes to mind when I think about telcos getting into video, especially after spending two days in Anaheim at TelcoTV. (See full coverage here.) Here’s why I say that:

• Telcos are losing landlines faster than they are signing up television customers and, as SezMi Vice President of Marketing David Allred pointed out, customers who move don’t automatically call the phone company first anymore, since they already have a cellphone. That means telcos without a solid video strategy risk losing residential customers altogether.
• But telcos are in the best position to revolutionize TV viewing and make it more personal and more mobile, argued Verizon SVP of Marketing and Digital Media John Harrobin and that gives them a big leg up on the cable industry.
• The technology is widely available to extend IPTV to the small screen (think iPhone) and put Internet video on a TV – I saw these things happen at exhibits including Widevine, Envivio, and Zeugma Systems, and heard about it from AT&T.
• But doing fancier things like mobile TV and social networking on the TV screen could distract telcos from what they need to be doing - getting video right.
• Microsoft announced hitting the 2-million-IPTV-customers mark on the show’s opening day but was a non-entity at Telco TV, with only a meeting room presence and no major speakers.
• Everyone agreed that the economic downturn will affect IPTV sales – but there was little agreement as to whether it will drive sales up as people stay home or depress them as people cut luxury items in the face of job losses and falling home values.
• There are plenty of options for middleware, but independent telcos speaking at the show agreed that they are still struggling with this aspect of their deployments and are looking for more standards.
• The Broadband Forum is stepping up to the standards challenge, announcing its engagement in IPTV quality efforts at TelcoTV.

So what’s my opinion on all this? I think IPTV is still something very few non-industry people know about or understand, and that the industry has a long way to go, but has the energy and determination to get there. Unless it doesn’t.