Meeting the market

Inside the telecom industry, we tend to focus on big technology trends and innovations that ultimately have little relevance in the consumer or business worlds. By the time the technologies we talk about reach the market, they usually have different brand names or form factors, or they have been subsumed entirely into a commercial product set. At the end of the day, the thinking goes, the consumer (or business) doesn't care how you deliver the service, just that you do it reliably and at a competitive price.

It's interesting, though, to watch AT&T and Verizon try to balance the need to tout new technology with the practicality of delivering a new service as they enter the video market. Both companies are trying to be more innovative and much more local in their marketing. The companies admit that strategy is partially due to necessity. The AT&T U-verse and Verizon FiOS rollouts are block by block, so door-to-door marketing makes more sense. As I note in this issue's cover story, AT&T and Verizon also are now aggressively courting landlords and tenants and tailoring their marketing message to them as well.

That ability to tailor the message is likely to be a little-noticed key to the success of telco video services. The other key, as it turns out, appears to be the ability to install properly and quickly. At the recent National Association of Broadcasters Show, Dan York, executive vice president of content for AT&T, admitted his company's biggest challenge has been keeping up with demand and being able to complete installations quickly and reliably.

Recently, Comcast has complained that AT&T U-verse installers are messing up Comcast Internet service when delivering U-verse to customers who retain their cable modems. That's not a big surprise when you think about it. Installing an IPTV service into a household that has a separate IP service is not an easy or intuitive thing, and given the home networking and other installation complications that already exist, this kind of hiccup is predictable. How AT&T addresses the problem will be interesting — the initial response was to deny it exists.

Finally, both AT&T and Verizon are trying to juggle multiple video delivery options — their own networks and their satellite TV partners — to get the maximum reach for their service bundles. Cable is trying to denigrate this two-headed monster: Time Warner Cable's ads targeted Verizon, and the two now are headed for a court battle. I'm not sure how much consumers understand all these different nuances, however. I think they are still focused on features and price.