While the world moves to multi play Australia yet to do triple play

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 12 October 2006 12:26

IT Industry - Deals

Global market research company, IDC has sounded a wake-up call to Australian telcos warning that they have yet to seriously embrace triple play while the leaders among their overseas counterparts have already moved on to multiplay.

IDC's study, "From Triple Play to Multi play: Comparison of Australian Telcos and Overseas Best Practices," finds that France Telecom is currently leading the evolution from triple play to multi play, moving beyond the mere bundling of data, voice and video to include additional value added services such as multimedia streaming and home monitoring services and positioning the home gateway as the cornerstone of home communication and entertainment.

Other national incumbents such as KT, AT&T and PCCW are not far behind. However, in Australia, neither Telstra nor Optus have committed to offer triple play services, IDC says.

IDC found that broadband developments in the past four years in France point towards a sequence, where competition spikes off innovation, and the advances in service offerings lead to upgrades in network infrastructure. "Australia is still in the early days of the 'competition' phase, and should Australia follow the footsteps of France, Australians will see innovative services from local telcos in the next two years," IDC says.

According to Sophie Lo, IDC's analyst for consumer digital markets, in France, innovative services spurred by alternative ISPs, lead by Iliad, urged France Telecom to pursue its own home gateway strategy.  "As both telcos are churning out innovative services, most of which are multimedia and entertainment oriented, there is an increasing need for more bandwidth, leading France Telecom to test fibre-to-the-home  in mid 2006, and Iliad to announce the roll-out of a FTTH local loop.