TIME Europe Magazine writes:
As digital technology enables more customers to bypass traditional paid services, telecoms are scrambling to introduce services that combine telephone, broadband and subscription television into a single package that can be piped into every home and eventually to mobile devices. So far only 5% of Europeans have “triple-play” services voice, video and data in their home, but 35% say they are interested, according to technology consultants Forrester Research. That’s a huge potential market. “There’s a race now among all the operators to arrive first,” says Luigi Pugliese, a telecom consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton in Milan. “The world of triple play will soon close. It’s growing rapidly and the first to get a customer will not lose him.”
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If it works, multiplay would be a huge departure from the traditional structure of Europe’s telecom industry, and the product both of deregulation and technological progress. And the bets are large: BT, long the dominant telephone provider in Britain, is spending $17.4 billion upgrading its network to provide triple-play services over a single line.
