Although other vendors remain well established in the T-Com (Deutsche Telekom's broadband/fixed network business unit) FTTx network upgrade, Ericsson's share of this account is nevertheless seen as a significant win for the company because T-Com is effectively the largest DSL network in Europe.

That was the word from Erik M. Keith, senior analyst for broadband infrastructure at Current Analysis, at the Broadband World Forum in Berlin in October. Keith added that: "As operators move from legacy voice and first-generation broadband-data services to advanced multi-play service bundles, one of the most important items will be the ability to enable broadcast-quality, multi-stream video and especially high-definition TV.

"Support for advanced, multi-stream TV and video services will be critical for operators to maintain their margins, gain new customers and compete effectively with rival offerings," he said.

Beyond FTTx, the market is looking especially robust as many operators, such as France Telecom and Neuf Telecom, are strongly committed to building out deep fiber-access infrastructures.

"Those two companies are among the most aggressive in terms of deep fiber, including fiber to the home (FTTH), which can be very profitable as operators develop advanced, multi-play consumer-service bundles and users take advantage of these new services," Keith said.

Over the next 12 to 18 months, he said, the incorporation of traffic management and other intelligence functionalities into the access node will be increasingly important because it will help facilitate advanced video service delivery and also enable operators to overcome several IPTV middleware deficiencies.

"The nightmare scenario for an IPTV operator is a flood of simultaneous unicast stream requests overrunning the established multicast streams - such as during commercial breaks. This can be a big problem for users," he said. "In a 'perfect storm' scenario, we have been told that users can experience delays of up to 13 seconds depending on traffic congestion, which poses a massive problem for the operator."

So in the future, broadband infrastructure vendors that offer more than just "speeds and feeds" - that is, by incorporating TV/video service-enabling functionalities such as traffic management in an access node - will be better positioned to win continuing business with operators over the long term.