IPTV to get video boost from IBM

What started out as an anti-establishment diversion, television or more properly broadcast video over the Internet, is suddenly getting to be serious business.

How else to account for the announcement from no bigger establishment player than IBM that they designed and will launch software to improve the quality of IPTV.

The solution, Tivoli Netcool Service Quality Manager will be sold to communications service providers.

Both the service providers, those whose pipe is used to deliver the service, as well as the content providers need to assure higher quality viewing to take IPTV to the next level, i.e., millions of viewers and a potential billion dollar advertising market.

Gartner estimates that IPTV will have 103 million subscribers by 20011.

However, if the user experience includes jagged audio, static and frozen video, delayed buffering and dropped transmissions, you can bet the promise and the revenue from all those viewers will soon disappear.

The IBM solution is the result of the acquisition of Micromuse and Vallent last year combined with its own Tivoli Netcool technology for managing communications services.

In addition to IPTV, the solution also identifies and fixes service degradation problems for IP-VPN and VoIP.

Of course for those who want to remain “anti-establishment” there is always Internet TV–more of a no-holds barred version of IPTV–television broadcast over the public Internet as opposed to the closed circuit concept of IPTV.

But if the likes of YouTube–it could be argued the Internet itself– has shown us anything it is that sometimes the establishment doesn’t win and it has to accommodate the revolutionaries.

Viva la revolution.