SBC: Business IPTV
Wrap your mind around this article from Light Reading. SBC (it would appear) plans to offer IPTV service bundles to enterprise customers. This is news because IPTV is generally thought of as a residential service.
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SBC’s enterprise product will originally deliver video and data over fiber, the source says, and may initially include AT&T’s VOIP service.
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In the enterprise setting, the SBC IPTV product is a system of building and hosting data, in contrast to the residential product which is largely a distribution channel from pre-existing outlets (studios, broadcasters, and movies-on-demand services). However, SBC did boast that users of its residential IPTV service could create their own channels that friends and family could watch — a feature that sounds like an early blueprint to our source’s description of SBC’s enterprise video service. (See Inside SBC’s IPTV Factory.)
There will likely be ample opportunities for SBC’s brand of “business TV” in the enterprise world. For instance, an airline might use the system to distribute entertainment and safety content to passengers in its terminals. Using the same distribution system, the airline could also serve up policy and training videos to employees in its corporate offices.
Universities might host content for students that can only be contributed by instructors or administrators. And a big company, like IBM, might use the IPTV product to roll out sales or training videos to its salespeople and field technicians.
[via Light Reading]