Dave Horvath
13 Oct 2006 7:59
Redmond is ablaze with new ideas of how to, once again try and break into the US television market and share some of the wealth that cable and satellite companies garner. After such failed attempts as WebTV, Microsoft has tried repeatedly to launch a successful and profitable television service over the Internet.
Microsoft's own standard, Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) has been a budding technology since it's inception. With US markets not really adopting it early on, it's strugged from day one. Now poised with multi-million dollar contracts with worldwide companies such as AT&T, British Telecom, Deutsche Telekom AG, and Verizon, Microsoft hopes to finally bring it's IPTV streaming television solution to fruition.
They hope to bring faster and more interactive television services than currently provided by cable and satellite providers. Several stumbling blocks are touted merely as "growing pains" include details like picture in picture and high definition solutions via the stream. These high dollar contracts are with major telecommunications firms so that their service receives the utmost attention from the network backbones. In preparation, companies like AT&T and Verizon are spending millions of dollars laying fiber optics straight to customer's doorsteps.
Microsoft claims last year, three million subscribers in their test demographic brought in as much as $400 million in revenue. Their hopes are to receive as many as 49 million subscribers generating $13 billion by 2010. Of course, this isn't their only source of income. Genuine Microsoft servers will need to be deployed to provide the streams for the telecommunication companies, thereby generating even more money for the conglomerate. Just imagine a world in the very near future where even your television can get a blue screen of death.
Source
Reuters