Abstract
While FTTP has been the biggest telecommunications story for the last couple of years (first as a
potential and now in deployment) next years story is going to be that the RBOCs are moving into
residential video delivery in a big way. This was very clear in this years SuperComm in Chicago.
Everyone there seemed to be selling IPTV or something associated with it. After so much testing,
learning, false starts and failures, the RBOCs are really committing to a massive effort to compete
on a network basis in residential video delivery! This report will highlight the video effort of the
RBOCs; it includes an extensive description of IPTV and its associated technologies; it will provide
an in-depth review of the various last mile architectures, and the approaches to video delivery; as
well as provide extensive forecasts for subscribers, penetration rates, costs, and revenues from
these services.
The RBOCs, all four to greater or lesser extents, are now in the process of rolling out FTTP
(fully detailed in our report "FTTP -- Going Strong in 2005.") Verizon has a monumental
effort underway, and the others are in various stages (lab tests, minor deployments or preparing
massive rollouts) of deployment. The RBOCs are simultaneously on the verge of actually moving into
the video business in a massive way. At least two of the four RBOCs are expected to be in the
residential TV delivery business before the end of 2005 and they should become major residential
video players in 2006. Several relatively new technologies will be deployed in their entries into
that business, and the RBOCs will use just about every imaginable combination of those technologies
to achieve their objectives. This report covers all details of these video delivery activities with
an emphasis on the latest of these technologies - Internet Protocol Television (IPTV.)
IPTV is the heart of the RBOC plans to attack the video market. IPTV is not just a different way
to deliver TV (it is, of course, that also) but it has the potential to be the basis of a whole new
suite of services. | 
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