Analyst predicts delays for AT&T’s TV service
April 26th, 2006Will AT&T scale back Project Lightspeed, its plan to bring 200-channel TV service to 18 million homes? That’s what ThinkEquity analyst Anton Wahlman is predicting—and he expects stepped-up marketing of the phone company’s Homezone product (which is Dish Network plus add-ons) in the interim.
Karen Brown, reporting on AT&T’s quarterly earnings in Multichannel News, finds the company has surprisingly little to say about its multibillion-dollar IPTV project:
…the earnings were notable in part for what was absent—updates on AT&T’s Project Lightspeed fiber-to-the-node buildout or U-verse TV service, which is now in a San Antonio trial, were not even mentioned in the earnings release, and during the conference call Tuesday morning, seldom was heard a word about either.”
Lightspeed’s core problem, according to Wahlman: It’s too slow.
He believes AT&T needs to sharply increase VDSL2 bandwidth speeds if Lightspeed is to compete with cable. “AT&T is likely realizing that 25 megabits isn’t going to do the trick, but rather that it needs to plan for 100 megabits or more to the home today, with a path to Gigabit Ethernet to every home in the next five to 10 years at the most.”
Lightspeed’s hybrid transmission system of fiber and copper wire is called into question by Jim Carlini, an adjunct professor at Northwestern University.
If you’re going to go through all this redeployment, AT&T should be setting its sights higher on real broadband and long-term capabilities. Providing another flavor of DSL is shortsighted.
• Links: Multichannel News: one and two; Wisconsin Technology