Television From Your Telephone

Nov. 9, 2004 — -- Rooftop antennas, local cable TV systems and digital satellite systems are some of the more common ways television entertainment is fed into homes now. But could couch potatoes soon get their video fix via the telephone line, too?

TV via a simple telephone line is already happening on a very small scale in the United States, some industry insiders say. But as high-speed Internet connections become more prevalent in American homes, the lines between traditional telephone and television services providers are blurring.

Already, many cable TV providers are expanding their fast broadband home connections to include Voice over IP services, which allow subscribers to use the Internet to place phone calls to anyone worldwide. Since VoIP calls are carried as digital computer data, users can bypass the traditional switched phone network -- and the usual costs of telephone calls.

And such moves by cable TV companies have regional telecommunication companies gearing up to fight back.

"There's already a certainty that telecos will have to offer video services," said Vamsi Sistla, director of broadband and residential entertainment technology research for ABI Research in Oyster Bay, N.Y. "They have to hold onto their subscriber base, they have to keep churn [turnover] rates low … Cable TV [companies are] eating their lunch by offering telephone services."

But offering television over the Internet -- TVoIP -- is a technically tricky task for phone companies. Digital TV signals produce data files that are at least an order of magnitude larger than VoIP files. And such large files would choke digital subscriber lines -- or DSL, the telecom industry's high-speed Net connections that are faster than ordinary dial-up connections, but slower than cable TV's broadband.

Several companies, including software giants such as Microsoft and networking equipment makers, have been trying to further the development of TVoIP systems. And UTStarcom, a computer network solutions provider in Alameda, Calif., believes it has a TVoIP solution that could be implemented soon in the United States.