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China telecom giants eye India for IPTV

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CIOL Bureau
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SINGAPORE: With the government of India working towards creating a feasible atmosphere in the connectivity space, Chinese telecom majors like ZTE or Huawei are eyeing India to deploy IPTV solutions and services.

The companies are showcasing their latest product offerings in this space at the ongoing CommunicAsia 2005 in Singapore. While telecom remains the core focus for Chinese companies like ZTE Corporation and UTStarcomm, it is the tremendous growth potential of applications like IPTV that is attracting them towards the segment in an aggressive way.



With an aim to entrench itself in the IPTV space, China's ZTE has already signed an agreement with Altas Interactive in December last year. According to the agreement, ZTE is going to provide IPTV services to 60,000 Atlas subscribers based in four major cities.



"This is just the beginning for us. The project involves supplying and commissioning services like TVoIP for a range of triple play (Voice, Video, data) segments," informed Bin Bao, NGN Product manager, Director Engineer, marketing department at ZTE.

Bullish on the growth potential of IPTV, the partnership is targeting to achieve 500,000-subscriber base in India covering more than 32 cities in the next two years.



Replicating China's model?

At a time when most of the telecom players are busy rolling out new networks and aligning themselves towards the changing market needs, applications like IPTV are going to provide the much needed growth - when it comes to targeting newer revenue streams.

"Today's telecom service providers are looking out for more revenue streams. IPTV can be their piggy bank if they plan well. Indian market is huge and we have all the applications needed to target this segment," explained UTStarcomm Telecom Media Switch engineer manager Richard Sun.

With IPTV on a roll, applications like TV on demand, video on demand content streaming, content distribution and even collaborative gaming can be a possibility. "There was a time when Chinese operators were looking for applications to generate more revenue. That's when they seriously ventured into areas like IPTV. Though there are no numbers available, but the market has grown ten times in China in the recent past," Sun added.

India and China are countries with different cultures but both the regions have a large population base. With the government of India opening up its key sectors like telecom, in the recent past there has been an upsurge in the number of Chinese telecom players testing Indian waters.

CyberMedia News



The author traveled to Singapore at the hospitality of Sonus Networks.

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