AT&T, BellSouth Face Cloudy IPTV Future

While both sides of the AT&T Inc.-BellSouth Corp. merger claim it’s business as usual, their IPTV executives admit that the pending mega-deal will potentially impact the rollout of one, or both video-service projects.

That’s in part because AT&T’s u-verse effort is built on a FTTH/FTTN network architecture, while BellSouth employs a hybrid fiber-to-the-node/twisted-pair approach. AT&T’s Jeff Weber and BellSouth’s Lee Friedman claim no knowledge of what the future could hold.

“We’re not freezing anything, but we don’t know what’s next,” Friedman, director of IPTV applications and applications infrastructure for BellSouth, told xchange. “We’re still doing trials and development. Since both of us are at starting points with IPTV, I don’t think there would be a big effect.”

Nonetheless, the attempted $68 billion acquisition, which initially progressed quickly but is now being held up by regulators, has both IPTV execs staying tuned. “We’ll know what the future holds once the FCC tells us what we can and can’t do,” Friedman said.

Weber, vice-president of product and strategy at AT&T, shared his thoughts on the topic with xchange. “We’d rather do IPTV one way rather than two,” he confessed, hinting that an approved merger could mean changes to BellSouth’s current plans. “But, to be honest, we don’t know if that will be possible.”

AT&T said it plans to reach 19 million households by the end of 2008 as part of its initial deployment.

Friedman and Weber said the future of an AT&T-BellSouth IPTV “plan,” is on hold until definitive word on the acquisition is received. “Planning has to take place after the merger,” Weber said.

AT&T Inc. www.att.com  

BellSouth Corp. www.bellsouth.com

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