Alcatel and Amdocs, already working together on SBC's Project Lightspeed broadband upgrade, have signed a letter of intent to jointly develop and end-to-end solution supporting deployment of triple-play services, including IPTV, by other broadband service providers.

The partners said in a statment that a joint development will help speed deployment of these services, while reducing operational costs. Early this year, SBC chose Alcatel and Microsoft as primary vendors to support Project Lightspeed, while Amdocs was added SBC's vendor roster in early May. At that time, John Stankey, executive vice president and chief technology officer of SBC, said the carrier was pushing its vendors to work together as much as possible to accelerate SBC's time-to-market.

Under the terms of the agreement, the Amdocs IP Convergence Solution for IPTV will be integrated with Alcatel’s suite of IPTV offerings to ensure seamless connectivity and interoperability between platforms. Alcatel and Amdocs also create a joint architectural map and service offerings, and plan to engage in joint sales and marketing efforts. The companies already have begun development of an Interoperability lab that will simulate real-world production environments and will help in the creation the end-to-end offering.