AT&T’s IPTV Plan Change Raises Core Questions

AT&T Inc.’s confirmation last week that it had shortened its 2006 IPTV deployment plans – from the long and publicly stated 15 markets to only 11 – coupled with its reason why, has raised core questions as to the current health and well-being of the video ecosystem.

To recap, AT&T’s Jeff Weber was sticking to the 15 market goal roughly two weeks ago.

“We’re targeting 15 markets this year and are planning to grow that footprint as quickly as we can,” AT&T’s vice president of product and management said in an interview with xchange magazine. “We plan to add applications as we go through the first quarter of 2007.”

Last week, AT&T upped the count to four – adding San Jose, Calif., and San Francisco –  and changed its goal to 11.

Wednesday, it added Hartford, New Haven and  Stamford in Conneticut, and Thursday morning, it reached its new goal by announcing four cities in Indiana – Muncie, Indianapolis, Bloomington and Anderson.

Asked why the number of deployment markets for this year was shortened, an AT&T spokeswoman said: “We are continuing to fine tune, upgrade, and enhance our IPTV software and other systems based on some key learnings in our initial markets. Our network build and related operational systems remain on-track.”

The telco’s stated goal is to pass 19 million homes by the end of 2008 with U-verse, which already boasts several hundred standard definition channels of programming, 25 high-definition channels, a DVR offering – accessible via the web – and high-speed Internet access.

AT&T focusing on IPTV software and systems rekindles discussion about the viability of partner Microsoft Corp.’s IPTV middleware, which has long been rumored to be facing scaling challenges.

Asked to comment on the change in the abrupt AT&T’s U-verse deployment timetable, a Microsoft spokesman would only say, “We cannot comment on behalf of AT&T regarding the specifics of its launch plans.”

But what of Alcatel, now Alcatel-Lucent, which was tabbed long ago to provide AT&T integration services required for the U-verse launch?

Weber said in the recent interview that “Alcatel is handling video integration, but at the end of the day we do integration across all the pieces.” This vendor’s role has come into question of late after it filed in November two lawsuits against Microsoft over intellectual properties that it would not identify. It’s also unclear what role Scientific Atlanta’s integration unit is playing as it works closely with AT&T infrastructure partner Cisco Systems, Inc.

At press time, an Alcatel spokesman had not returned multiple email requests for comment.

It’s unclear what the AT&T spokeswoman is referring to when she mentioned “other support systems.” It’s well known that AT&T has long been working with AMDOCS Ltd. On an off-the-shelf, build from the ground up effort for the billing and OSS systems needed to support U-verse.

It’s also uncertain if AT&T was referring to Motive, Inc. which has claimed for months that it’s working with AT&T to better equip call center representatives by installing software that would enable them to query a long list of systems to identify service problems.

When AT&T announces a market, such as San Antonio or Houston, its first two for U-verse, it’s difficult to determine how widely available the service actually is.

In the case of San Jose, AT&T said U-verse services “are initially available in limited areas across the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara metropolitan statistical area (MSA), including parts of the cities of Cupertino and Saratoga.”

In the case of the Bay area AT&T said the package is “initially available in limited areas across the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont MSA, including parts of the cities of San Ramon and Danville.”

Amdocs Ltd. www.amdocs.com  

Alcatel-Lucent. www.alcatel-lucent.com  

AT&T Inc. www.att.com  

Cisco Systems Inc. www.cisco.com  

Microsoft Corp. www.microsoft.com  

Motive Inc. www.motive.com

Share this article: Email, Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Yahoo!MyWeb, Windows Live Favorites, Furl
Add this article feed to: RSS, My Yahoo, Newsgator, Bloglines