As telecom operators push hard to roll out Internet Protocol (IP) television services worldwide, they face major roadblocks in the shape of licensing and franchising issues, according to new studies from ABI Research.

On one side, content providers worry about the security of IP networks, which are certainly not immune to hacking. These concerns affect the license arrangements they must reach with telcos wishing to distribute their intellectual property.

From another quarter, cable operators -- justifiably fearing Telco TV's encroachment on their traditional turf - are lobbying governments fiercely to ensure that the telcos pay the same sort of franchise fees and go through the same degree of legal bureaucracy that they do.

According to ABI Research's principal analyst of broadband and residential entertainment technologies, Michael Arden, "In the US, this means thousands and thousands of individual contracts. Overseas, with lower cable penetration and less stringent government regulations, it is often a smaller problem."

A partial solution - at least for those telcos that can access fiber-to-the-home networks - is "RF overlay", in which the TV signals are sent down the fiber network in a format equivalent to that used by cable services themselves. RF overlay is "a next-best solution to get content to the market quickly."

These and many other topics are examined in a new ABI Research offering, "Telco TV Infrastructure, CPE and Service Provider Research Service", an annual subscription service that details qualitative and quantitative analysis of Telco TV infrastructure, Telco TV/IPTV services and revenue, and Telco TV CPE (IP STBs, gateways, and other home connecting devices). It also examines access technologies and access-network deployments that support operators in their rollouts of Telco TV.

The Service also includes a detailed database of relationships between Telco TV equipment vendors and the operators to whom they supply equipment.