Telco TV: smaller is quicker: two southern phone companies are almost ready to deliver video.(Progressive Rural Telephone)

While telco giants grapple with the challenges of delivering TV over telephone lines on a massive scale, two relatively tiny telcos in the deep South are already racing ahead with video delivery. Within a matter of months, the Farmers Telephone Cooperative in Kingstree, S.C., and Progressive Rural Telephone in central Georgia plan to begin offering TV to subscribers-over existing copper phone lines. Farmers has 60,000 customers; Progressive has 5,500.

Meanwhile, behemoths like Verizon and SBC don't expect to be able to send video over their expensively upgraded fiber-optic lines until the end of the year or later.

What makes the little guys so nimble? Internet Protocol television (IPTV) technology, which facilitates the otherwise impossible task of sending TV over copper phone wires. IPTV works because it is more …