Telephone companies have the means to improve their competitive position by taking advantage of improved service creation platforms for delivering easy-to-use, highly customized interactive television and video services, according to a senior executive with mPhase Technologies, a pioneer in internet television (IPTV).

Phil Thompson, executive vice president-product management for the mPhase TV+ System, told an industry forum that open standards, rather than proprietary systems that limit innovation, are the key to rapidly creating highly personalized and compelling services for premium subscribers.

"Popular culture and diverse interests quickly fade with each passing wave, yet IPTV delivery platforms today are too static to keep up with contemporary trends and impulsive audiences," said Thompson. "Telcos can seize the advantage of their carrier-grade broadband systems to rapidly morph their service offerings to this new market reality - catering to people's whims and impulsive behavior."

Phone companies must contemplate a variety of inherent conflicts to making service secure, yet open to many developers, rich with features, yet intuitive to the average person. Still, he noted that architectural models with standard and familiar Web tools are now available for balancing the new requirements. A comprehensive service creation environment can have built-in flexibility for rapid provisioning and billing consistent with legacy systems while incorporating innovations from multiple vendors.

Relying on standard programming protocols like HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol), XML (eXtensible Markup Language), SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), and WSDL (Web Services Description Language), telco personnel now have ready tools for a variety of administrative, market research and provisioning systems to achieve the desired flexibility for profiting from rapidly-changing consumer habits, said Thompson. As examples, he cited a variety of portal services to quickly cater to impulse shoppers wanting to buy pizza, engage in multi-screen games, contact customer support or access value-added services like email, chat or custom music downloads.

"There is no disputing that rich services reduce customer churn, and the way to compete today is to create a suite of rapidly-evolving content that suits today's fickle audience," said Thompson.

mPhase's As You Like It ^TM service creation platform addresses many of the requirements that Thompson outlined. To obtain further detailed information about creating customized content packages, telco representatives are urged to register on the mPhase web site at http://mphasetech.com/asyoulikeit.htm.