Ever been at a conference and thought "you know, I've got far more interesting things to say than that person"? Well, the mesh gang decided to give people the chance to walk the walk, rather than just talk the talk by creating 15 Minutes of Fame. We're giving three people a day five minutes each (hence, 15 minutes) on stage to talk about their ideas, their companies or themselves. After a flurry of submissions, we've selected our guinea pigs: The luck folks include:b Gary "King Gary" King, a high school student who is running his own Web 2.0 design firm; Parv and Daniel, who have created an intriguing site called Favorville.com that gives people a way to exchange..well, favors to get things done; and Colin How of Pixpo.com, which develops photo, video and music-sharing software. The other 15MOFers are areyoufrank.com, Devshop.com (recently featured on TechCrunch) and TakingITGlobal.org. Full details on 15MOF can be found on the mesh blog. mesh is happening May 15/16 in Toronto. You can register here.

For all the talk about IP-TV, it's taking plenty of time for the hype to become reality. That said, Telus plans to roll out TTV (creative name, eh!) in the coming months. For $79.95 a month, consumers will receive 200 digital channels and features such as time-shifting. First impressions: it seems expensive but ROI and rational pricing are the name of game in the Canadian telecom and cable markets these days. The big challenge facing Telus and other carriers around the world is convincing people IP-TV is better than what they already receive from cable. Why switch when cable gives you everything you need (VOD, PPV, HDTV, PVR, etc.) And while IP-TV has been touted as the service that will provide carriers with the much-desired quadruple play, there are still signs its widespread launch is being held back by technical and scaling issues. BCE Inc. is a good example of promise vs. reality. Originally, BCE was going to launch IP-TV (using Microsoft software) in the first half of 2006. But during a conference call yesterday, Bell Canada's 6'7" president and COO George Cope madly tap-danced around a question on the carrier's IP-TV launch plans - citing the need not to tip off the competition (aka Rogers, Videotron, Cogeco). Truth be told, it will not be until some time next year before Bell is ready to go. A key issue is Bell's decision to adopt VDSL2 and MPEG 4, which means Bell will have to wait until the technology is ready for prime time.

Update: Infonetics Research has issued a new report that suggests the number of IPTV subscribers globally will jump to 53 million by 2009, while $26-billion of capex will be spent on IPTV infrastructure. Infonetics equipment equipment sales to soar to $6-billion by 2009 from $400-million in 2005.