Sunday, October 23, 2005

No IPTV yet and other thoughts

October 15, one of the dates that I was tipped off would be the start of Lattelekom's IPTV service, has come and gone. The only sign of IPTV is a new and dead link (Apollo TV) on the revamped Apollo portal (for Lattelekom's Apollo internet platform). So it would appear that the TV launch is still around the corner, just the corner is farther off than I was told.
Meanwhile, Triatel also pushed back the official announcement of its cdma450-based high speed wireless internet service. This has been running experimentally over the summer, but it appears the company is holding back on a launch until number portability is implemented on December 1. The reason – it wants existing Lattelekom customers (with no DSL/relatively slow DSL for one reason or another) to come to its network and take the whole new package -- cdma450 mobiles, wireless deskphones and broadband. This is what they will be selling in some parts of the country from the "Magic Bus"(see the earlier post). Now that I think about it, not too many Latvians will recognize this song by The Who,. Maybe "Omnibus" by the Latvian singer and comedian Fredis would be more suitable, except the "omnibus" in that song is a little menacing, since (if you follow the Latvian lyrics) it runs over people's vegetable gardens. Well, Lattelekom is one company whose countryside veggie garden will be uprooted by the Triatel "omnibus", but we shall see.

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