IPUrbia

Articles here, here, and here (the last one has the nice title) discuss AT&T’s problems with Microsoft’s video middleware scaling beyond the current 5,000 subscribers deployed on a trial basis. As Greg Galitzine of TMC Net notes:

Other middleware companies don’t have this problem, which relates to the fact that the Microsoft OS has inherent overhead requirements not suitable to the “real time” demands of video unicast and multicast systems

The main problem is scalability, requiring more servers than was expected (or is typical for similar deployments using non-Microsoft middleware). This, of course, surprises no one who has actually deployed a Microsoft server of any sorts; I personally found the concept of a real-time service based on the crudgy Microsoft OS surprising as most real-time operating systems are designed from the ground-up with real-time architecture.

Microsoft is heavily invested in their IPTV platform by now, although they’ve not really had what can be called a truly successful roll out and have had highly publicized failures at Telstra and delays at Swisscom. Still, Microsoft does have capital and the commitment to eventually get things operating well, and I don’t doubt that they will eventually be able to muscle their way through their technical difficulties.

Still, this is definitely not good news for AT&T who is bleeding voice customers to voip and cable companies. With recent news that Comcast is doing nearly a billion dollars of annual voice business, AT&T needed their U-Verse triple play offering about two years ago, and another year delay could be disastrous.