Triple play (telecommunications)

In telecommunications, triple play service is a marketing term for the provisioning, over a single broadband connection, of: two bandwidth-intensive services, broadband Internet access and television, and the latency-sensitive telephone. Triple play focuses on a supplier convergence rather than solving technical issues or a common standard. However, standards like G.hn might deliver all these services on a common technology.

A so-called quadruple play (or quad play) service integrates mobility as well, often by supporting dual mode mobile plus hotspot-based phones that shift from GSM to Wi-Fi when they come in range of a home wired for triple-play service. Typical Generic Access Network services of this kind, such as Rogers Home Calling Zone (Rogers is an incumbent in the Canadian market), allow the caller to enter and leave the range of their home Wi-Fi network, and only pay GSM rates for the time they spend outside the range. Calls at home are routed over the network and paid at a flat rate per month. No interruption or authorization for the shift is required—soft handoff takes place automatically as many times as the caller enters or leaves the range.

By about 2000, cable TV companies were in a technical position to offer triple play over one physical medium to a large number of their customers, as their networks already have sufficient bandwidth to carry hundreds of video channels. Cable's main competition for television in North America came from satellites, which cannot compete for voice and interactive broadband due to the latency imposed by physical laws on a geosynchronous satellite—sometimes up to one full second of delay between speaking and being heard. Cable's main competition for voice and Internet access came from telcos, which were not yet able to compete for television in most markets because DSL over most local loops could not provide enough bandwidth.

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