The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Australian telephone company, Telstra Corporation, had pulled out of a deal with Microsoft to use its Internet TV service. Sources around the media have been spinning the news since.

Forbes wrote today that, "Telstra Corp has decided not to use Microsoft TV as its Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) platform, according to Telstra spokesman Warwick Ponder." Additionally, Ponder said the Australian carrier is searching for a new platform to launch a planned IPTV offering.

Meanwhile, MarketWatch writes several hours later that a Telstra spokesman said that no such agreement had been reached in the first instance.

So who do we believe - Warwick Ponder or the other Telstra spokesman?

Mr Ponder said Telstra discussed the prospect of doing a field trial with Microsoft but decided not to go ahead at this point in time "entirely for our own internal and local market reasons and not because of anything to do with Microsoft's product."

"At this point, Telstra has no firm plans for taking any IPTV service to market - either in trial or commercial form. If and when we made a decision to offer an IPTV service, from a commercial and technical perspective, Microsoft's platform would be one of a number of serious options," he said.

We regress and go back to an article posted 2 days ago by New Zealand's Stuff where Chief Operating Officer Simon Moutter said Telecom has selected Microsoft's IPTV platform to test its ability to deliver video to customers' TV sets over its copper phones lines and fibre optic cablehead but had not "locked in" any obligation with Microsoft.

Mr Moutter says the telco is wary of going head-to-head with Sky TV in the near term by using its next-generation IP-based phone network to deliver live TV broadcasts to customers.

"We have taken a strategic decision to be in video-based services but not full-blown IPTV."