What he said is both true and at the same time totally false.
There are currently many limitations with delivering IPTV. Low bandwidth Internet radio is doing well and will get better as first-mile speed improves and it becomes possible to multicast and/or cache streams locally.
The "IPTV will never happen" mantra is reminiscence of all disruptive technology. PCs did not dominate the market because they were better computers then mainframes and minis, they did it because they created a new market that had not been served before. Once PCs were accepted technology improved and ultimately they began to displace legacy systems.
The same thing will likely happen with IPTV. A few innovative "TV stations" will pioneer the service. Quality will be lower then over the air or Cable but customers will be willing to make the trade-off because there is no other way to obtain the service. Over time quality will improve an one day legacy players will wake up and find their customers have migrated to the new technology.
Ramp up tends to take years and moves very slowly. Once critical mass is reached the change happens with astounding speed. I've worked at companies that missed important technology changes and the result has not been pretty. At the same time new technology is risky. One always needs to balance moving too soon vs too late.
Andrew Odlyzko wrote an interesting paper several years ago about:
Internet TV: Implication for the long distance network. All in all the next decade will be interesting forcing many business models to change.
/Tom