An article on IPTV from Canadian Business Magazine ca 2006

[asirota]

I particularly like the quote from this article on Canadian IPTV and deployments from SaskTel and MTS Allstream in Manitoba.

"TV is going to change more in the next five years than in the last 50," says Christine Heckart, general manager of marketing for Microsoft TV, which sells an IPTV software platform that has been adopted by some of the world's biggest telcos, including Bell Canada. "Today, it's where the PC was in the 1980s, before the Internet."

So what is the "Internet" of the TV? Surely it's not whole home PVR? One thing I have been thinking about is the nickle and diming of the household. How many times have you spent too much time and/or money on

- children tutoring
- phone services
- pet services
- recreation research

The services that are coming on IPTV that let you create a much more userfriendly and complete environment to do these services and more is what will revolutionize TV. I strongly suspect that along with huge bandwidth speeds, the TV will be the screen that most people are talking about as that elusive "Tablet PC". That is I suspect that the killer application of IPTV is actually value added services to automate and help you run your life and your family's life in a much more satisfying and easy way.

And I sure do hope that the telecom realize this business model and price the base services accordingly. Having Internet as a must-have service like phone service is right around the corner, if I am right.