Folks in the IPTV space used to spend a lot of time during conference panels and interviews with me talking about the allure of “local” content as a way to draw consumers away from the cable TV and DBS providers and into their waiting arms.

I’ve since turned the IPTV beat over to Bob Wallace, who recently wrote about a NAB discussion on local content. I know Verizon has its own local channel on FiOS, for which there’s no clear business plan as far as I can tell. And our business editor Kelly M. Teal earlier this year blogged about how Ringgold Telephone Co. in Georgia is losing money on what it calls its popular local TV effort. But I haven’t heard or read anything about any significant efforts or successes around local content for IPTV providers or, for that matter, anyone else.

However, just last week I ran across a piece about The Washington Post’s failed attempt to sustain a hyper-local new effort called LoudounExtra.com. Despite all the resources you’d think The Washington Post would have at its disposal, this local effort has fallen short because it didn’t focus enough on learning about and becoming part of the local Washington, D.C.-area community it was created to cover. As a result, it was never able to draw a significant and loyal audience.

So, although many have been preaching the gospel of local news and information in recent years, it appears to be a bigger challenge than folks at first thought. As a former weekly newspaper reporter, this is not a huge revelation. Whatever the size organization they work for, local news reporters don’t make much in the way of salary, so this kind of job tends to attract very young and inexperienced reporters who, as they build their skills, tend to want to move on to bigger and better things.

But maybe we don’t need reporters for this, at least not too many, some have suggested. My sources a few years ago talked about relying on local folks to provide existing footage of high school football games, for example, which could then be offered on IPTV channels. That sounds like an even lower-cost option, for sure, but not really a model to base your business on.

Let me know what you think about this local content issue. And if you can point to a local content initiative that’s making money, please enlighten me.

If you’re considering Carrier Ethernet, but you still have a lot of unanswered questions, there’s now another resource that may provide some answers.

Telco Systems last week went live with a Carrier Ethernet site that offers providers a guide through the common difficulties of deploying Carrier Ethernet.

Among the questions addressed at the site are:

* Will Carrier Ethernet work over my existing infrastructure?

* How can I offer new data services without cannibalizing my existing customer base?

* With all the acronyms like PBB, PBT, MPLS, H-VPLS, EFM and CFM floating around, how do I know which are best for my network?

* How do I provision and manage the access network and each customer site?

* How can I ensure the SLA that I have with my customers?

"We are excited to have created a central resource that maps out the common problems encountered in the market today, and deconstructs the myth that deploying Carrier Ethernet is a daunting and costly process, when in reality, deploying this technology can be cost efficient and rather simple," says Manu Kaycee, vice president of product technology and strategy at Telco Systems.

For more from Kaycee and Telco Systems, you can also check out the xchange/Telco Systems eBook.

The term deep packet inspection, or DPI, got a bad name when it first moved into the telecommunications lexicon -- or at least when most of us became aware of it. DPI, you may recall, became a key term in the battle over net neutrality and was often described as the method by which incumbent service providers could block or otherwise impede traffic from those entities that were seen by some as just trying to give the Internet a fighting chance.

What a difference a couple of years make.

Today, the term DPI has come back into vogue. But somehow now this technology – which a large collection of suppliers are marketing as a way to help network operators offer better customer service by enabling them to deliver new broadband services and otherwise optimize network performance -- doesn’t sound quite so bad.

Among the companies that have been talking up the benefits of DPI lately are Allot Communications Ltd.; Procera Networks Inc.; Qosmos; and Zeugma Systems, to name just a few.

Allot has announced a major new version of its NetXplorer software, providing an array of new carrier-class reporting, accounting and provisioning capabilities related to DPI. Procera just replaced its entire marketing and sales teams and rolled out a new DPI solution. Earlier this month, Qosmos closed a third round of fundraising worth $10.8 million. And Zeugma earlier this week came out with a solution that includes a DPI component.

DPI has seen a resurgence to help broadband service providers, whose networks have been inundated with a variety of new bandwidth-loving traffic but are still looking for business plans that will allow them to monetize the boom in bandwidth demand to a greater extent. Could this finally be what we’ve all been waiting for?