Major telephone companies must strike a balance between getting IPTV widely deployed and differentiating their product from that of cable companies by packing in the features, according to Microsoft's top marketer for IPTV.

“IPTV is a richer TV experience, and it has the potential to be substantially differentiated,” said Christine Heckart, general manager of marketing for Microsoft TV. “But if you start with something that is overly complex or too differentiated, you run the risk of scaring the market away. That's why we're telling telcos they need to think big, but start small and move fast.”

Heckart knows more about the telecom industry than your average Microsoft executive. The woman now focused on IPTV once guided WilTel's data network service implementation, then went on to advise dozens of telecom start-ups as president of TeleChoice before aiding Juniper Network's challenge of Cisco Systems in the router arena.

She admits that AT&T's rollout of IPTV, which will take place later this year, “is critically important to us and to the U.S. market,” and sees the new service coming into its own this year.

“The ‘start small’ part really says, when you come out of the gate, do TV really well,” she said. “Make it a better, more intuitive and richer experience than what you can do in TV today. Then, once you have that platform in place, you can move fast to introduce new features.”

From the outset, IPTV will do some mundane things better, like change channels faster and offer more fully integrated picture-in-picture capabilities, Heckart said.

“We assume from the beginning that you might want to record any show, so the DVR capabilities in IPTV are integrated in from the grassroots architecture and are a natural part of the experience,” she said.

IPTV promises whole-home digital video recording (DVR) without limitations on what can be recorded, Heckart said. Those kinds of advancements give telcos ways of marketing IPTV from the outset, she believes.

“What people really are about is just getting good TV,” Heckart said. “It's about telcos being in the game and being able to offer a bundle of services — all of the little features are less important than just getting them into the game. That said, they are likely to make people want to switch [from cable or satellite], especially IPTV's ability to help them make good choices. There is so much out there that anything that helps me sift through the content is a big plus.”

“It's absolutely important to focus on getting the ‘TV’ part right,” said Derek Kuhn, senior director of marketing and business development for Alcatel's Strategic Solutions Development Group. “That's the critical first step.”

Heckart also believes in the quad play — voice, data, video and wireless — but sees the real value in what she calls the “single play.”

“When you really start to intertwine [voice, data, video and cellular] because they go over one IP network, then you stop just share-shifting and begin increasing the overall size of the market, and that's where it gets intriguing,” she said.

At that point, telecom operators begin to claim a piece of the overall entertainment and commerce market, which they haven't had before, instead of simply stealing customers from cable and satellite.

One of the major challenges telcos face with IPTV is avoiding the marketing fiasco of their early DSL deployments, when more customers wanted the service than could actually get it.

“There will be some of that because more people will want this service before it is available to them,” Heckart said. Microsoft will be working with the telcos on the marketing end and trying to address this and other issues, she added.