Buying TV service from the telephone company still sounds a little strange (in North America at least), but new numbers from AT&T suggest that the idea might be catching on.
AT&T began offering its U-verse IPTV service in 2006, but spent much of the year slowly learning how to serve high-bandwidth video (reliably) over a converted telephone network. The company said in January that it had signed up only 3,000 U-verse customers by the end of 2006.
But in a new statement Wednesday AT&T says that number has now grown to about 18,000. The company says it's now installing the new service in roughly 2,000 new households per week; that's about five times the rate it was managing in January.
AT&T also said Wednesday it will begin offering the U-verse video service to customers in Los Angeles in the next few weeks. U-verse is already available in selected parts of San Francisco and San Jose, California.
In the first three months of 2007, AT&T launched U-verse in Milwaukee, Kansas City and Dallas. The service launched last year in Indianapolis, Indiana; Hartford, Connecticut and San Antonio and Houston, Texas.
Big phone companies like AT&T, Verizon and Qwest are betting that selling video service will answer the cable companies, which have moved aggressively into selling (IP) telephone service. The telcos also know that their video services must be better than--not just comperable to--those of the cable companies.
The promise of IPTV has always been the cool stuff that might result when video is blended with other IP services like Internet access, telephony and wireless service. For instance, AT&T said Thursday that U-verse users can now access their TV listings and program their DVRs remotely using either a Web browser or a cell phone.
Hopefully, that's just the start. Other, more interesting service "mashups" might be offered in the future. For instance, while watching your (IP)TV, a text message might arrive on your screen from your kid's cell phone. Or, you might be able to open a "collaborative viewing" session with a cross-country friend in which you watch TV and talk in real time.
IPTV, the phone companies say, is also bi-directional, so TV watching might become a far more interactive experience than it is now. In services like U-verse, video packets are sent down to the set-top box in the living room, and the set-top box can also send messages back.
I'm not talking about just voting for American Idol here. New software companies are showing up with add-on products that will allow IPTV watchers to play games together and even vote for political candidates.
Now if they could just figure out how to put everything on ONE remote. Stay tuned.
