Triple Play Becomes Quadruple and Quintuple Play

BY RICH TEHRANI

Cablevision’s Optimum Online recently announced they will add in antivirus, firewall and parental control features. If the triple play (define-news-alert) is voice, video and data and wireless turns this into the quadruple play, then we are surely at the quintuple-play mark when service providers continue to give more and more services in a single bundle.

A company like Cablevision needs to now resell wireless service as well to stay competitive. Eventually this may be done via WiFi telephony or WiMAX telephony, but for the time being the most frequent network that gets tapped for such jobs is Sprint PCS. AT&T (quote - news - alert) Wireless and Virgin Mobile both resell and rely on this network.

Well, AT&T Wireless is a GSM network, you say, and has nothing to do with Sprint PCS. Yes, that is true, but AT&T Wireless is now part of Cingular and AT&T is by contract allowed to relaunch a wireless service if the name AT&T Wireless is not in use. Lots of confused customers are just waiting to be created when they don’t understand why their GSM phones won’t work on the AT&T network. Maybe it won’t be so bad, as we seem to be throwing away cell phones more frequently than even spouses as a country.

But I digress. Sprint PCS is in a great position to help service providers become quadruple players. I wonder when we will be able to use push to talk VoIP to communicate with Sprint PCS Nextel customers. I am sure it is just a matter of time.

I am not a fan of push to talk but many others are. Some of the really interesting features that can be provided over an IP network are the ability to monitor push to talk conversations or to log them and keep them as translated files for archival purposes and later search.

SER has some great technology that checks for profanity in a call center. It is called SERTAINTY. I wrote about the SERTAINTY Quality Assurance Platform recently. What a great tool to add to push to talk in an enterprise. Imagine if you knew every time someone on your team swore or used language that was potentially discriminatory or harassing or mentioned your competitor.

Sure this is all big-brotherish, but in a litigious society such as ours corporations will need services like these to protect themselves from lawsuits.

So as the triple-play expands, there seems to be no limit to how many services tomorrow’s service providers can provide and charge for.

A few service providers have already asked me about triple-play coverage at Internet Telephony Conference and Expo this February in Miami and yes, the triple, quadruple and quintuple play will be huge part of this event, as it is an integral part of VoIP 2.0.

Rich Tehrani is TMC's president. He welcomes your comments. Participate in our forums.