Source: Indiantelevision.com

MUMBAI: The subscriber base of IPTV in the Asia-Pacific region is expected to grow by 51 per cent this year closing at 9.4 million users and accounting for 37.6 per cent of the global subscribers, reveals research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan.

A new analysis from Frost & Sullivan titled ‘Asia-Pacific IPTV Update’ finds that the IPTV subscriber base in the region would grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24.6 per cent between 2009 and 2014 and, by the end of 2014, would climb to an estimated 23.5 million subscribers.

In 2008, only eight Asia-Pacific territories had commercial IPTV offerings namely India, China, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Thailand and Singapore and subscribers stood at 6.27 million.

Vietnam launched IPTV services this year while countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand are expected to roll out IPTV services in the next 12 months, with a launch in the Philippines slated for 2011.

Says Frost & Sullivan industry analyst Adeel Najam, “”The key considerations for IPTV’s success are broadband penetration levels and low pay-TV presence.”

Najam believes that as much as 62 per cent of the IPTV subscriber net additions from now until 2014 will come from emerging markets like India, China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines.

Source: The Hindu Business Line

New Delhi, Sept. 29 Airtel’s IPTV consumers can now enjoy a much better service with broadband speeds of 1 Mbps.

The Internet Protocol TV service, offering triple play or telephone, broadband and television services on a single line, is currently available in Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida. The new faster connection “Magic@Home Freedom” will be available for a monthly subscription of Rs 1,899.

The “Magic@Home Turbo” package, costing Rs 1,499 a month, runs at 512 kbps during the day, but gets doubled to 1 Mbps during nights.

Airtel’s IPTV service was launched in January at 256 kbps speed with an installation charge of Rs 3,999. The company has since reduced the installation charges to Rs 2,499 with wi-fi, and Rs 1,999 without wi-fi. The package currently offered is 384 kbps service offering 135 channels and three months free pay-per-view for Rs 1,299 a month.

Announcing the new faster packages, Mr Vikas Singh, CMO, Telemedia Services, Bharti Airtel, said in a release, that the new packages would open up new segments of the Triple Play market and attract heavy broadband users who will benefit from the higher bandwidth.

The two packages would also take the company’s IPTV service to the untapped sections of the market, he added.

Launched in January in the NCR region, the service is to be rolled out to the top eight cities, including Bangalore, Chennai and Mumbai in a phased manner.

Source: TelecomTiger.com

Things are not looking good for IPTV services in India. The reason is quite obvious since the broadband penetration in the country itself is yet to pick-up.

A new research from Screen Digest reveals that IPTV services will find increased uptake after the penetration of broadband services in households having access to pay-TV services increases from the present figure of 4.2 % to 13.4 % by 2013.

While the world maybe moving towards adopting the digital mode for TV services. But in India, Analogue mode enjoys an unmatched dominance. The analogue medium has a market share of 89 % in the pay-TV market. There are more than 60,000 operators offering services over this medium. And the subscriber base is estimated to increase from 80 million in 2008 to 113 million by 2013.
DTH as a medium is picking up well with almost 10 million consumers hooked to the medium for TV services.

“This inflow of funds will also be crucial to the digitisation of the nations’ analogue cable TV networks – necessary not just for the cable operators themselves to be able to compete with satellite, but for the entire TV value chain,” concludes Venugopal.

Source: Business Standard

With broadcasters and the government close to working out a new content code for television, foreign movies with partial nudity and mature content may soon be allowed at all time bands on digital addressable media platforms like direct-to-home (DTH) services, conditional access system and IPTV platforms, which have the provision of a parental lock.

Currently, all foreign language films, even after adult certification from their country of origin, have to get approval from the Indian censor boards. To get the nod, they invariably have to undertake re-editing of the “objectionable” portions in the films, in accordance with the existing programme code under the cable TV law.

The existing analogue cable services may also be allowed to show adult content on television (foreign cinema to start with) but from 11 pm to 4 am only, as a broad consensus is being arrived at on the draft content code between the government and broadcasters, pending resolution for over two years.

This comes after the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B) re-started discussion on the new content code with broadcasters. Government sources say at the most three to four more meetings will be required to finalise the code, that will replace the existing one, adapted from the guidelines drafted for Doordarshan decades earlier.

Sources say in the latest meeting a few days earlier between the Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF), the apex body of all broadcasters, and the I&B ministry, several key breakthroughs were achieved.

“Among several things, the I&B ministry has favourably responded to our draft content code on inclusion of adult content, specially in foreign cinema, on digital platforms, with facility of parental lock. This was there in the original draft code in 1994 but struck out later,” Jawahar Goel, president, IBF, told Business Standard. Though, details on how much nudity in foreign cinema are to be allowed on Indian telly screens has to be worked out with the government, he said. IBF’s draft content code has also included content aired on local cable channels that are shown within cities or localities in cities without requiring uplinking or donwlinking (without involving satellites).

There are over 470 channels officially allowed to downlink in the country. Around 45 per cent are news and current affairs channels, and around 25 per cent are movie channels, both foreign and domestic. But there are over 5,000 local cable channels across the country that flout all applicable cable laws currently, as they are not monitored by the authorities. IBF has assured the I&B ministry of bringing these local channels in the purview of the new content code.

Goel also said that one content code for all existing and new media platforms like IPTV, HITS, mobile TV and web hosting, among others, is also being agreed on with the government. IBF has proposed a task force of members from government and broadcasters to see that one comprehensive content code is to be made to encompass all current and future media platforms.

For news channels, the self-regulation code developed by the News Broadcasters Association (NBA) will soon be notified to cover all news channels, even though not all news broadcasters in the country are affiliated with NBA, said Goel.

Source: TelecomTiger

UTStarcom is riding high on broadband and IPTV uptake in the Indian market. Considered to be a formidable player in the segment, the company foresees a strong business case for IPTV services in India. UTStarcom South Asia MD, Vijay Yadav shares his view points in an exclusive interaction with TelecomTiger.

Q1) A lot has been said and written about advantages of IPTV over DTH. The advantages however have not been able to work to advantage of IPTV services where in the real scenario uptake of IPTV services as compared to DTH is very low in India. As a technology solution provider to IPTV service providers, how do you view the situation?

Ans: First of all, whenever a new technology comes in, different people have different ideas of how to position their products, and there are certain service providers who are positioning it as more superior than DTH, and in several ways, it is. However, we, as technology & solutions providers look at IPTV quite differently. From my perspective, IPTV is not a technology or a service which is competing with DTH, or for that matter with any of the other forms of TV access currently available like digital CAS, and analogue. IPTV is complementary to the current forms of services.

Besides, comparing IPTV with other forms of broadcast is not right as it would be the same as comparing mobile phone with fixedline, which people did 14 years back, when mobile phones first came. But now we have learned that you can’t compare these two products. It would be a similar case with IPTV and DTH or other forms. IPTV as a service will augment what is already there on DTH and thereby complementing it the way mobile phone complemented wireline.

Coming to your second point, uptake for IPTV is obviously lesser, since DTH as a technology has been around for more than a decade, and in India it has been available for more that 2 to 3 years. IPTV, serving a hi-end need, will initially reach to a limited numbers. For a technology in its first year, the subscriber rates for IPTV are still quite descent.

Q2) IPTV services depend a lot on uptime of broadband connectivity provided by the operators. Indian operators are not known to have satisfactory level in terms of delivery of services, revealed Trai study reports. What should be done to change this perception as well as overcome the challenge?

Ans: Broadband is deployed largely on brass-copper line and marginally on fiber. It’s a well-acknowledged fact that voice services on wireline are turning out to be more reliable as compared to wireless. With the quality of data or bits traveling on the fixedline being better than wireless, the standards are itself very high.

Compared to other countries, we definitely have a less superior quality, but the quality can be driven if more services are carried out on the wire.

Technically speaking, broadband is a pre-requisite for enabling IPTV. However, interestingly, we feel that IPTV will drive the growth of broadband especially in India. In simple words, the market will drive the need and the need will drive better quality due to competition among service providers.

In the current scenario, when the broadband goes down or doesn’t deliver a quality up to the mark, the user in a home scenario doesn’t care much. Once users start using broadband for video services like IPTV, they won’t tolerate poor broadband connectivity and will put pressure on service providers to deliver better quality. I know of people who can tolerate their phone lines being down for half day, but not their TV for half hour. Broadband connection can be made very reliable – the technology and solutions exist; when users start absolutely insisting that it has to be always-up reliability, the service providers will start enabling. Once the demand for quality broadband increases, it will automatically result in better services being delivered. In today’s consumer-driven market, service providers who continue to deliver sloppy services cannot survive for too long.

Q3) Another issue which is very ironical is that IPTV is mainly limited to a very limited addressable market i.e. fixedline subscribers having broadband connection though efforts are made now to reach out to even those subscribers without fixedline connection. Do you think the addressable market available now commands a viable business case for operators?

Ans: From our perspective, IPTV can be extended to two categories of people, first being the ones who already have wireline or fixedline connection, which can be addressed easily. The second category comprise of people who need the connection. In a premise, where wire is not there, as long as the wire can reach the place, it is a matter of business case to us.

For obvious reasons, India is not limited by wire which is already in place. But, if there is a business case, then people will go ahead and put in an additional wire. It brings us to the same point that I have said earlier, IPTV will drive the growth of broadband. The size of market that we’re talking about already is not small. The amount of copper lines in the country is already 70 million, though the voice users on wireline in the country are somewhere between 45-50 million. Once IPTV starts driving growth of broadband, this extra unused wire will also become more valuable.

Furthermore, the market which we are talking about is not a small one. With IPTV offering a bouquet of features, to the extent that we believe, India doesn’t any longer need a ‘$100 PC’ to bridge over the digital divide, as we already have ‘$100 TV’ in the form of IPTV that brings the power of interactivity to your humble TV remote itself! Therefore, people will move to wire and opt for broadband just to experience the benefits of IPTV.

Q4) Globally PCCW is considered to be the ideal case study where the launch of IPTV services helped the company in not only keeping a check on drop in fixedline services but rather witnessing addition of new subscribers for the services. Do you foresee such a possibility happening in India especially in case of BSNL?

Ans: PCCW is a good success story for IPTV in Hong Kong. But I believe that in India, IPTV will be a greater success. But at the same time there are greater challenges as well.

If I talk about the biggest challenge for IPTV in India, which is unique to our country then that would be the fact that ours is the only place where one could get 150 channels for Rs.150, or roughly $3 for 150 channels. PCCW never had to consider such marginal pricing.

Secondly, Hong Kong is a country with a small population. Here in India, even with a 10 percent penetration, we will far outdo the numbers that are talked of in past success stories. The whole business case dynamic is quite different.

IPTV will be a far more relevant technology to India as compared to any other country.

As of now, we see it working out very well with MTNL and BSNL and Airtel. BSNL and MTNL, with an enormous reach of the wire and Airtel, with the zeal of creating innovative services, are both performing well. In addition, quite a lot of other operators with good wireline plans will contribute a lot to IPTV success in India. All we have to keep in mind is that this is the first year of commercial operation of the service and for a first year, it has done well. We need to keep our faith and give it some more time before we start seeing the ripple effect to build up. It is a natural progression for any new technology that initially the adoption is slow and then starts picking up very fast.

Q5) Do you see any scope for government incentives to be extended to drive uptake of IPTV services in the country?

Ans: Our belief is that IPTV will be more relevant for non-computer-literate people in rural and urban India. We believe that IPTV should be treated like an infrastructure service. If the government invests in setting up the infrastructure, then really the reach can be phenomenal. IPTV has the potential to change from a TV medium to an information medium and then to a productivity tool. Let’s see what information mediums a non-computer-literate person has today – practically nothing! He needs to travel to a library to access any information, that too only during working hours. If this information is provided to people in simple audio-visual form, they are still as capable of absorbing it as much as any computer literate people. We already have many informational programs created and available in the country; however their value remains low because they are being broadcasted at specific timings. The viewers may not need that information when it is being broadcasted – or they may not be aware of the broadcast timings even if that information is relevant to them. However, in IPTV, such informational clips are stored on a server, and viewers can seek them out based on their preference or relevance at their preferred time. For example, using IPTV, a lady can watch a program on neo-natal care when she is pregnant, and another person can watch a program on managing diabetes or cancer when he is diagnosed with it. Farmers can watch programs on taking care or Khari or Rabi crops in relevant seasons, or pest control techniques when his crop is attacked by them, and so on. The IPTV medium on our TV remote is so simple to use that even our grandparents can use it.

There are forums and industry champions working towards achieving infrastructure status for IPTV.

While I can’t comment on the decision makers, yet I have surely seen a lot of openness on the part of government towards acceptance of new ideas that help the society. Less than a year back, we didn’t even have an IPTV policy. But various industry forums impressed the need of having a policy to the government and now we do have a new policy. Thus, if these forums are able to convince the government about the fact that IPTV is an infrastructure that will immensely benefit the country and the masses, and if the government also sees value in the interactivity of the technology and decides to invest, then the growth of IPTV will be truly amazing.

Q6) Do you expect the market dynamics to change dramatically post entry of private operators in the field?

Ans: Entry of any new operator spells competition for existing ones. We believe that healthy competition leads to better services for the consumer and helps grow the addressable market. I don’t specifically differentiate between private and government because, in telecom, both private and government operators have contributed a lot.

Similarly, with IPTV, we see equal amount of participation and enthusiasm from both government and private operators. Both are equally important at driving IPTV growth and we will continue to work with both.

Q7) It is expected that wireless broadband will dominate the broadband landscape in India in next few years. From an operator’s perspective, what should be the approach to migrate IPTV infrastructure from a fixedline environment to wireless medium?

Ans: By broadband, if you define an internet access at acceptable speed, then wireless will be a dominant player, but if you define broadband the way it is defined by many countries as 2 mbps dedicated, or even as defined by TRAI as 256 kbps dedicated, then wireline will continue to remain the dominant player. Providing 256kbps dedicated on wireless is very cost-prohibitive.

While wireless will grow and sure will have an important play in the country, the reason I emphasize so much on the speed aspect is because the moment we say IPTV, we are talking about traffic video, which is both bandwidth hungry and time sensitive. Among the traffic that we’re used to so far, while on one hand, voice is time sensitive but not bandwidth hungry, and data is bandwidth hungry but not time sensitive, IPTV requires both – high bandwidth as well as time sensitivity. So considering these two important parameters, we are talking about a really robust broadband connection, which is capable and is dedicated. For services like a really robust IPTV, the minimum speed you need is 2 mbps dedicated, and ideally 3-4 mbps dedicated, which only wireline is capable of providing in a commercially viable business case.

Although wireless brings in mobility and flexibility, yet if IPTV is to be brought over wireless, it will have to change its form – quality will have to be brought down to keep up with limited bandwidth on mobility, you may even have to learn to live with a certain amount of jitter and flicker because that’s what wireless networks are capable of delivering now or in the near future. Therefore, IPTV on wireless will remain a limited play with limited features, till wireless technologies evolve to deliver dedicated high speed bandwidth to match with wireline Broadband.

Q8) UTStarcom has been in the forefront of product evolution in the broadband and IPTV space across the globe and more so in India. What are the new solutions the industry can expect from the company in days to come?

Ans: The features of our technology offerings can be divided in three forms, with the simplest form being recorded content, which can be viewed whenever you want to. The first phase is already on the floor and is being used by masses. The second form, which is the interactive content, has also been made available now.

Graduating to the third level, we are now trying to make a virtual classroom for the masses, which is right now not in a commercially deployable form.

Similarly, lots of applications which are relevant to India are being worked upon. From Aksh, there is a service called A-Tube that categorizes information and allows users to access information according to categories, ranging from city-specific local information, about shops, cosmetics, healthcare, childcare and so on. And within the information pulled out by the user, the system is capable of embedding only localized relevant ads that are very focused on the targeted audience– in my opinion, this is a very relevant advantage for a large country like India where the audiences differ greatly in their preferences, and we don’t usually fire up the computer to find such information. These are the kind of innovative services we are enabling on top of IPTV in India.

On the same A-Tube service, Aksh is working to provide an application on matrimony, allowing people to upload their text-based profile or even a 5-minute audio-visual profile for a shelf life of let us say 3, 6 or 12 months. Such services will have longer shelf life than placing matrimonial ads in papers.

We’re tying up with different platforms and universities to make available stored lectures available to IPTV subscribers. We have also made available technology to enable interactive content with question-answer sessions.

Using IPTV for tele-healthcare and e-governance are technologies that are available. In fact, Aksh has already tested e-governance on BSNL network in a small village called Kukas near Jaipur, where village panchayat can interact with district headquarters using IPTV.

Q9) What are your upcoming business plans for the Indian market? Any fallout arising out of the announcements made at the global level related to cost saving measures?

Ans: In broadband, we have been the leaders in India for three running years, starting 2007, which was the year of broadband. In IPTV, since the market in India is not large enough and analysts may not be tracking it yet, but we believe that we would have a leadership position in IPTV also.

We are working with the government to see if they could announce 2010 as “a year of IPTV” just like 2007 was “year of broadband” earlier. Such an IPTV year will enable specific programmes and initiatives to drive growth of IPTV infrastructure which will contribute significantly to the country’s growth and productivity.

The telecom market in India has largely remained immune to recession. However, to meet the challenges of the general slowdown in the economy, we have indeed undertaken cost-cutting initiatives. However cost cutting should not be confused with man power cutting. We have not reduced man power in India. But yes, we have taken lots of initiatives to lower down the cost of doing business and bring in better operational efficiencies. We believe that ultimately it is a good thing for the customers if we’re able to maintain same quality at lower costs. From my perspective, that’s an initiative we will continue to have for quite some time.

At the same time, we have not shied away from investing time, resources and money in something that we believe will be good from growth perspective for us the industry, and the country, like IPTV for instance.

Source: Reuters India

MUMBAI (Reuters) – IPTV, touted as the next big thing after the Internet, is unlikely to take off in India for at least two years, as it battles existing modes of entertainment, low awareness, and poor quality issues, industry players said.

Launched with great expectations in 2006, IPTV, or Internet Protocol Television, has gained a subscriber base of over 13,000 in India, compared with 10.9 million users of digital pay TV, mainly direct-to-home, or DTH TV, according to Frost & Sullivan.

“Indian IPTV deployment has experienced a slow start and it’s becoming increasingly clear that IPTV services over the next five years will struggle to gain any real momentum,” said Kamlesh Bhatia, principal research analyst with Gartner.

IPTV is also struggling because of the slow penetration of broadband internet, needed for delivering good quality IPTV content, which stands at a mere 6.28 million subscribers, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.

“The dismal broadband penetration, the pervasive pay TV market, and low awareness on IPTV are the key barriers for the uptake of IPTV in the short term,” said Manish Dixit, analyst, ICT Practice at Frost & Sullivan.

The presence of telecom majors Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications, along with state-run MTNL and Bharat Sanchar Nigam, hasn’t helped much.

Bharti and Reliance also provide DTH services, which they are promoting aggressively, as viewers embrace this system faster, analysts said.

“While many of the carriers talk about IPTV or order small amounts of IPTV equipment, their real focus is on direct-to-home satellite services,” Gartner’s Bhatia said.

Moreover, they don’t have the requisite fixed connections needed to deliver IPTV content to a viewer, they added.

The growing number of wireless connections are also hurting the growth of IPTV, which requires a fixed line broadband connection to work effectively.

CHALLENGES

However, content aggregators Aksh Optifibre and IOL Netcom, which distribute content through service providers such as MTNL and BSNL, are optimistic of grabbing eyeballs by targetting broadband users in metros and launching services in smaller cities in a phased manner.

A new player, MyWay TV, too entered the fray this year.

“We have bet a lot of money on this. We are absolutely sure that this is the way the entire world is going to move, sooner rather than later,” said Siddhartha Srivastava, president and chief executive officer of IOL Netcom.

However, Srivastava does accept that the limited broadband connectivity in the country is a problem.

“Broadband connectivity continues to be the challenge, whoever is able to work on that challenge will be successful.”

Quality issues also continue to dog IPTV. It has not been able to match the consistent high-quality service that a DTH viewer has become used to, according to industry players.

Content differentiation is another issue, with DTH being able to provide several of the features, if partly, which IPTV claims as its USP, such as time-shift, where a viewer can view live television at a time of her convenience.

Unless IPTV starts to generate enough business volumes, securing exclusive content could be an issue, experts said.

“Nobody is convinced about the power of IPTV. Ultimately any business is a power of an idea,” said Ashok Mansukhani, President of MSO Alliance. “Otherwise it has great possibility. It is just not happening”.