Verizon On Fios- Digital/iptv

After building a FiOS broadband-over-fiber network that dramatically increased its broadband Internet speeds, Verizon launched FiOS TV- first in Keller, Texas, and now available in parts of seven states, including California.

Intended to compete mano a mano with cable and satellite, FiOS TV — a hybrid cable/Internet-protocol television infrastructure — delivers hundreds of channels and video-on-demand titles to TV sets. Industry experts do not consider the network IPTV, but it provides a new medium for retransmission — and CBS and Turner Broadcasting System already have signed on.

A CBS spokesman says his company's Verizon deal was regarded internally as a simple retransmission arrangement, but Coleman Breland, executive vp sales and marketing at Turner Network Sales, expresses some of the doubts and caveats held by content owners who remain on the IPTV sidelines.

"If a distributor says they want the IPTV rights, we ask them, 'What's your definition of IPTV?'" he says. "For us, it's where you use an Internet routing protocol for transmission from point A to point B, and it's a closed-distribution system."

What it is not, Breland adds, is distributing content over the Internet.

"From a digital-rights management perspective, that's important to the industry: You can't just make it unfettered," he says. "If you want to distribute it via the Internet and kiosks in 100 cities, in doing so we have no DRM, no copy-protection. That's why we're working with everyone else to come up with a definition that everyone agrees on."

But Breland is not opposed to IPTV per se.

"We understand the benefits — that it saves bandwidth for distributors — but we have to be able to have it in a closed-distribution system," he says. "We want our viewers to be able to access our content on multiple platforms, but it has to be the right content for the right platform, the resolution has to be there (and) copy-protection and metering has to be there."

The ability to move IPTV-delivered content from device to device within a home, as well as to mobile devices, is another unknown for some content creators, who worry about losing control of copy-protection.

Even as he expresses concerns about IPTV, Breland notes that Turner distributes content over the Internet through AOL, Roadrunner and Yahoo!, wireless content through Cingular and Verizon and VOD through Comcast and Time Warner Cable, as well as popular broadband products like CNN Pipeline.

"There's an opportunity here (for IPTV), but it has to be one that makes sense from the points of view of business model, branding, content and DRM/copy-protection," he says. "That's why we're working with everyone else to come up with a definition that everyone agrees on."

— Debra Kaufman