Technically Speaking

Why? Because it seems like AT&T as well as Microsoft can’t figure out how to get the software to interact correctly with the hardware in place. Not only that, they have not scaled it well enough to even reach the million possibility. Worldwide, no one has reached that, but places like Hong Kong and France are doing it homegrown style

So far, none of the IPTV deployments in the world have reached that scale yet. PCCW in Hong Kong, which has built its own IPTV network using homegrown technology, had about 833,000 subscribers at the end of March, according to market research firm iLocus. France Telecom had about 768,000 and Free Telecom, also in France, had roughly 680,000, according to the firm.

The slow down here seems to be not being able to get it out of the testing environment and deploy it in a manner satisfactory to the consumer level

AT&T had predicted that it would deploy the service in 15 to 20 markets, but at the end of the year it reduced the total to 11.

Now today in Chicago, it looks like Microsoft is going to announce the third generation of software called Microsoft MediaRoom

On Monday, the first day of telecommunications trade show NXTComm in Chicago, Microsoft will announce the third generation of its IPTV software, now called Microsoft MediaRoom.

Technically Speaking, IPTV has a lot of great implications if it can get out of the test bed environment to the consumer. These implications would be a more interactive consumer experience.