COMMENTARY: IPTV is everyone's future

THE NORTH AMERICAN CABLE industry is getting a little full of itself gloating over the ongoing delays in telephone company launches of its so-called IPTV. This Internet protocol television, most actively and publicly spurred on by Microsoft, is the way that North American telcos must pursue delivering wired digital television. Short of overbuilding with a new cable system, telcos must go the IPTV route since IP-delivered television is the only way to funnel digital TV through the traditional telcos’ twisted pair copper telephone wire. It’s not about delivering television to PCs or TVs over the Internet. It’s about using Internet...