I'm not sure what they'll do (at first), but I'd be willing to bet that despite the picture of unanimity they tried to paint with their press release, they'll all be doing things differently within a year or two.
On the one hand, you could guess that they'll do whatever is the lowest cost and the least disruptive, and with the lowest learning curve (i.e not trying to leapfrog anyone's capabilities)
On the other hand you could guess that they might want to deploy whatever they have the least experience with, so they can say, "but Mr Powell, we're really trying to get these deployments moving, but we've never deployed this before. We can't very well roll out in mass when we're still having basic problems."
Besides what directions they may go with voice and video, it will be interesting to see what they envision the in-home distribution to look like. It'll be years before that is: a) standardized, and b)reliable with repeatable quality. They also have zero experience in THAT area, and they can't just pass the buck and say "hey, homeowner, that's your problem" because few will subscribe. They're way over their heads, and this is why I just never understood why everyone believed they were the ones that would lead FTTH-multimedia-broadband-nirvana deployments. They really would be better off playing a common carrier transport role, and giving the thousands of industry specialists an open platform to solve all these problems. Hopefully they realize this sooner rather than later. |
