Although triple play (the bundling of broadband Internet, voice and TV into one subscription) may not yet be a household term in South Africa, indications are that before too long people will stop having to define it. Worldwide, it is set to become so pervasive that some service providers are spending up to 40 percent of their capex on bringing triple-play to their consumers, according to recent Infonetics research.

But what about SA? Will we ever see television over the IP network (IPTV)? Perhaps a more useful question is whether we really need to watch television over the net. More to do It seems much still has to be done on developing better networks that can handle something as bandwidth-intensive as television over the Internet. Currently, access technologies such as Telkom`s ADSL, are nowhere near good enough.