Why Fear YouTube?

If everyone is losing money on IPTV and no one is sure if or when it will be profitable, and if the three things that will differentiate IPTV from cable TV—advertising, personalized services and interactivity—are still so far away, and if the cost of rolling it out is so outrageous due to the technical difficulties encountered in the field, why are they doing it?

It was only a few short years ago when service providers stuck to their guns on VoIP and didn’t allow hype, harassment nor Jeff Pulver to push them forward too fast. Tier 1 service providers tested and evaluated VoIP to death before reluctantly allowing it into their network. They weren’t afraid of Vonage then, so why be afraid of YouTube now?

What’s the rush? Never in the history of telecom have service providers rushed to market with such an untested and unproven service. I know, I know, that’s the old telecom; this is the new telecom. But going to market with a service they may not get quite right won’t remove a full body tiger-stripe tattoo any more than a phone call on Comcast’s new digital home phone service should things go wrong.

Somewhere along the line, service providers caved in to the criticisms about being too slow, not innovative enough, too “old school.” But it was abundantly clear at NXTcomm this week, that network service providers still are struggling with long-standing issues around dirty data in their network inventories and customer records databases; they are still struggling with automating the processes necessary to allow real-time customer self-service and in-service troubleshooting. In other words, they are still struggling with the technology and business challenges they experienced with their DSL rollouts.

Perhaps it is the excuse Verizon and AT&T and some smaller providers needed to get their FTTx out there and perhaps consumers will be more patient than expected when they notice no difference from their current television service. But those mid-tier service providers that displayed traditional telco patience by sticking with their Dish Network relationships are looking pretty smart about now.

E-mail me at heyBOSS@vpico.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