While not creating the same noise as its peers AT&T and Verizon in the IPTV market, BellSouth is working on a plan that could move it to the head of the pack in the U.S. The company, which recently announced a 250-home IPTV trial in Atlanta using Microsoft TV’s middleware package, also is exploring a process to convert its 50,000 existing video customers over to an IP environment, said Don Granger, president of BellSouth Entertainment.

The company has those customers thanks to the now defunct Americast partnership it created in the 1990s with Disney and former telcos GTE, Ameritech and SBC. BellSouth is the only carrier among the group to hold onto its video operations. And as Granger points out, just because those customers are served via hybrid fiber/coax networks doesn’t mean they can’t receive IPTV services.

“IPTV is agnostic to the platform,” he said. “Part of our development is testing the equipment that would go into those facilities so we can provision the same services.”

AT&T meanwhile just launched its first IPTV service in San Antonio and doesn’t expect widespread availability until later this year. Verizon’s hybrid IP/RF video service is available in more than a dozen markets, though it has yet to provide any customer numbers.

BellSouth already is trying to leverage the headends it built to serve Americast customers. Earlier this month, BellSouth signed an agreement with SES Americom under which it tested SES’s IP-Prime, a centralized, satellite-based video distribution system. As part of that test, BellSouth will take IP encapsulated video from SES and distribute it through its existing head end in Atlanta to IPTV trial participants. What SES brings to the table are the agreements with programmers to transmit content using MPEG-4 compression and IP transport.

“You can actually blend the two,” Granger said. “Even if you use an outsourced content aggregator you have to have some place to deliver it to. And you can’t do local channels in a national, aggregated service. We have found with SES that we’re able to quickly move into our trials with many more channels because they’ve moved forward with that as a business proposition.”

One other area where BellSouth will lean are the business practices surrounding video, particularly installation and customer care.

“We have an advantage there because we have been in the digital cable market for some time,” he said. “We have our own professionals. In the network we also have BST technicians handling the provisioning of all the equipment needed.”