Mr. Denson, who works for Verizon Communications, and Mr. York, his counterpart at AT&T, are playing starring roles in their companies' risky forays into the TV business. In the latest twist in an accelerating technological free-for-all, the Baby Bells are trying to shore up their flagging fortunes by muscling their way into what was until just a decade ago the bailiwick of cable companies. Rarely competitors in the past, cable operators and telephone companies are now scrambling to be the one-stop shop that will gladly accept your monthly payments to watch television, use the phone and have high-speed Internet access.

aka data, data and data.

Apparently ATT (SBC) is rolling out Microsoft's IPTV platform. Ick. Apparently in early trials, they needed a server per every 10 users for channel changing to be sufficiently responsive.

And this is a case where you control the whole network and can provision bandwidth so IP multicast could actually work...

Calling Out the Cable Guy