For more than a decade, telephony service providers have considered offering video services to residential customers. However, in the past it was not economically nor technically feasible to launch the implementation on a large scale.
Several technical trends and evolutions have propelled video delivery to the foreground, including:
technical improvements in areas like real-time MPEG encoding and compression
widespread deployment of High Speed Internet (HSI) over broadband access (ADSL and cable modems)
decreased cost of high-bandwidth infrastructure (typically Ethernet-based) as well as storing, converting, and delivering video content
increased competition between telephony and cable operators (this is partly because of changes in regulations)
Traditional cable operators began offering television services and later added Internet access and telephony to their offerings. Conversely, traditional telephony operators such as RBOCs, PTTs, have also added Internet access, and many are now in the process of also adding video delivery.
This bundling of video, voice, and data services to residential subscribers is now commonly known as Triple Play services. The video component always includes linear programming (broadcast television), but often also has a non-linear Video on Demand (VoD) component.