IPTV has been getting quite a lot of bandwidth lately, and there have been a lot of stories such as the ongoing SBC effort and the Alcatel/Microsoft alliance, among others.  However, despite all the hype, here's a reality check on the current status of the technology: last week, it was announced that Swisscom delayed its own IPTV launch.  IPTV is turning out to be quite more complex than previously thought; one of the technological challenges is scalability, and it still remains to be proven that IPTV networks can scale.  Another potential headache is regulation, as there are some regulatory risks that can potentially impede the ILEC rollout of TV services.  So in the next two years, expect there to be a lot of access network buildouts, with initial deployments (in small scale) only really beginning to ramp up in 2007.  Therefore, a wider consumer adoption of IPTV services probably will not happen before 2008-2009.