The competitive gap to offer video services is closing, according to the third annual survey of GLOBALCOMM 2006 attendees by Tellabs and Telephony magazine. More than half of respondents said that telecommunications service providers will emerge as competitors to cable companies in video services within a year. This time frame narrowed from last year's results, where 54 percent felt the gap would close in less than three years.

Survey participants also cited Internet Protocol Television's (IPTV) ability to deliver higher-quality video services than cable as a key competitive advantage. The ability to offer more personalized, on-demand services via IPTV came in second.

Additionally, 89 percent of respondents believe the youth market is an important or extremely important demographic for service providers. The youth market, also known as Echo Boomers (the children of the Baby Boomers), grew up with the Internet at their fingertips, cable television at home and mobile phones in their pockets. This generation places new demands on, and holds higher expectations about, the Internet.

"These survey results underscore consumer demand for communications services that are instant, intelligent and indispensable," said Steve McCarthy, executive vice president, global sales and service, Tellabs. "Service providers can position themselves to capture significant revenue by responding to this market need." Other results include: -- Ethernet business services were cited as the top driver of new bandwidth needs, followed by consumer video services and 3G mobile leased capacity. -- Internet data service was the top converged business service offering. Private line service ranked second. A majority of respondents felt that most business and residential voice traffic will migrate to Voice over IP (VoIP) in two to four years. -- Ethernet over Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) was the network technology of choice for voice, video and data convergence. Native Ethernet was second. -- Fixed/mobile convergence was a priority for 67 percent of respondents. However, approaches for convergence differed. Twenty-eight percent plan bundled billing, 26 percent will use IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), and 13 percent prefer Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA). Full survey results are available in today's issue of Telephony magazine or online at http://www.telephonyonline.com.