Triple Play promises bonanza

When Alcatel's Geof Haydon and Nick Whitehead present themselves to a panel of journalists, industry insiders and analysts in Auckland today to discuss Triple Play, they will no doubt paint a vivid picture of a potential technological bonanza still in its infancy.

It's a technology, they'll say, with the potential to radically change the way we use our telephones, televisions and computers.

Far murkier, however, is whether Triple Play - part of the announcement made last week amid much fanfare by Telecom New Zealand and Alcatel - will have an effect on end-users' bottom lines: their monthly bills.

"To be honest, it's really too early to tell," according to Victoria Crone, Telecom's manager of consumer marketing.

Late last month, Telecom chief operating officer Simon Moutter, alongside Alcatel Australia's chief executive Andrew Young, announced a $1.4 billion plan to migrate New Zealand's publicly switched telephone network to full internet protocol. The switchover, slated for completion in 2012, will support services unimaginable a few years ago.

Heydon, Alcatel's Australasian director of innovation, envisages a world where end users are able to access not only all land lines, mobile phones and email through a single carrier, but also get to these services through their television, and more.

"You'll see a much richer set of services based on combinations of what might be described as traditional voice and video-type services," he said.

For example, you could be watching the television, when suddenly a prompt might appear telling you of an incoming phone call.

"If you're watching a television using an IP-television kind of service, then it would be normal to experience a telephone call to appear on screen to say, 'phone call for you', and you've got the identity and the number of who has called."

Moreover, the potential exists for video telephone calls conducted over the television, video-on-demand services, or even the opportunity to send your kids a message across the TV telling them go to bed, then shutting off the box.

Whitehead, Alcatel's Asia-Pacific director of Triple Play, can see a time when All Blacks fans could pick personalised camera angles to focus on the action they think is important.

"There's no reason why at some time the TV screen couldn't be dedicated to a number of different camera angles - perhaps even some part of the screen could be dedicated to some sort of information sharing, internet-based application that gave you statistics on the players, the scores, and anything else you might like," he said.

Though bandwidth limitations mean the likelihood is slim of having an on-demand movie sent directly to your mobile, Heydon said it was possible to have a preview sent, followed by the option to select the film for viewing later from home.

"We could go on all day if we wanted to," he said.

All in all, it's probably Nirvana for the likes of Telecom's pasty-faced broadband pitchmen, the Xtra Ordinaries, but the people who actually run the company are still trying to gauge exactly what the market is prepared to pay for.

"You get some wild dreams out there, but we have such a wide customer base. We need to take all New Zealanders on this journey, including Joe Blow, who may be only on $30,000 to $40,000 a year," Crone said.

It is likely, however, that Joe Blow will see pricing options change as Telecom rolls out bundled services on the new network, but he won't see any sort of meaningful competition in the television market. Crone said agreements with Sky TV require Telecom to abide by "guidelines in terms of how we work through this".

In terms of pricing, Telecom's jury remains out.

"There are a number of different ways we could go. We could go into value-added ... we could actually go down a kit-type approach, with all your connect-type pricing. We don't have a firm view on what we're going to do at this stage," Crone said.

When Moutter made the Triple Play announcement last week, he acknowledged Telecom's big investment would be repaid in cost savings for the company, possibly about $100 million per year.

In the end, Heydon thinks consumers will ultimately be the winners, either through lowered fees, or through greater value-added features for the same price.

"One of the key things we're trying to do is help everybody understand that this is about building new IP networks, which helps reduce the operating cost of telcos, and that then enables a whole raft of new capabilities and services," he said.

And what does the future hold for consumers under Triple Play? Heydon thinks the potential remains largely untapped.

"What's really difficult to do here is list the millions and millions of possibilities that might evolve from this capability," he said.

While large organisations tend to be lumbering beasts, slow to respond to consumer demand, Heydon feels Triple Play will enable such firms to become more responsive. It will also put consumers in a better position to determine and demand the services they want.

Though converged telephone platforms and on-demand video appear to have a business case, Heydon expects the network will evolve rapidly as consumers become more comfortable with convergence.

"It will continue to evolve to add those kinds of services people want to see brought to market."