Ray Van Eng (10/10/97)               

Interactive TV is not dead. Telcos from Europe and Asia are either testing or deploying video over ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line) services.

Deutsche Telekom AG is looking forward to use the technology to provide customers in the North Rhine-Westphalia region in Germany video-on-demand, home shopping and video server applications.

Officials said their ADSL service offers a download speed of up to 6Mbps with a 384Kbps return path in the other direction.

British Telecom (BT) is also considering using ADSL for video-on-demand services to provide narrowcasting TV programming to consumers. Both BT and Deutsche Telekom AG are forging alliances with satellite TV and cable TV operators.

All over Europe, telecommunication operators are scrambling to deliver video via the existing copper wires infrastructure and that includes France Telecom, Swiss Telecom, Israel Telecom, Telecom Italia, Telenor Norway, Helsinki Telephone Co., and Belgacom in Belgium.  

According to Datamonitor, a London-based technology consultancy, Europe's online households were about 2.9 million at the end of 1996, and will grow to 38 million by 2001. By that time, 14 million homes will be getting some form of broadband interactive service from their TV sets.

Even so, Datamonitor expects the telephone companies to maintain a significant share of the online interactive multi-media market that may include electronic banking, home shopping, video-on-demand, news and infotainment deliveries.

Over to Asia, Hong Kong Telecom is planning on using VDSL (Very high-speed Digital Subscribers Line) over coaxial cables to customer premises at speeds up to 52Mbps.

Hong Kong Telecom is also relying on open standards such as Sun Microsystems' Java computer language and CORBA technology for the development of electronic commerce applications to augment its interactive multimedia offerings to consumers.

The use of java technology will allow HKT to upgrade customers to new service options without asking them to buy new set top boxes or re-configure existing equipment.

In the U.S., ADSL is often designed to provide users with simultaneous data (from the Internet) and voice services rather than for interactive TV services.

Under an agreement with Alcatel, Pacific Bell, BellSouth, Southwestern Bell and Ameritech are using ADSL and ATM technology to revitalize their plain old telephone lines to provide high speed network access services.