During a UBS Warburg LLC analysts conference, SBC CTO John Stankey said that they hope to launch SBC's IPTV service beyond San Antonio in late second-quarter 2006.

While initial testing in 40 homes is complete, Stankey said, SBC is waiting on several product issues to be resolved before heading to a full rollout. There is one more release of software from Microsoft he added, which will give us the full feature set, including HDTV services.

SBC is also waiting for its two chip vendors, STMicroelectronics and Sigma Systems Canada Inc., to complete system-on-a-chip-set design and integrate the technology with set-top vendors Scientific-Atlanta Inc. and Motorola Inc.

Once that's done, "we'll get a far better price point than our cable competitors," Stankey said.