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Follow UsBhaskar Hazarika
NEW DELHI: There is a huge competition between the Indian telecos to announce the IPTV services.
The major telecom operators are carrying out their trails individually and are desperate to offer IPTV services.
IPTV refers to a system where a digital television service is delivered to a subscriber using the Internet Protocol over a broadband connection.
Among the competition telecom giants, state-owned Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) is likely to be the first to offer its IPTV services by May-end. The carrier has enlisted content aggregator Time Broadband Services Ltd. to do the legwork in pulling together the video equipment, middleware, content, and billing systems, leaving MTNL to provide the distribution network. Both the companies have signed a seven-year revenue sharing agreement that essentially gives Time Broadband a franchise to run the service over MTNL's broadband connections.
In the trail process, which is still underway, Time Broadband, has lined up Optibase Limited to provide MPEG-4 broadcast and video-on-demand streams with capabilities for time-shift services.
However, the private operators are also not lagging behind in this market segment. Bharti Tele-Ventures Limited is trailing UTStarcom equipment and plans on this service. Bharti is planning to launch this service within this year. Paresh Shah, Director sales Engineering, UTStarcom said that they are targeting 5 major telecos on rolling out IPTV in India.
"It is the right time, India has initiated for rolling out IPTV, but for successful roll-out broadband should take off first," Shah said.
He said that they had started the commercial trail in September 2005. The company would be offering IPTV through MPEG-4.
It is assumed that MTNL is set to be the first out of the gate with a commercial service to go live first in New Delhi, then in Mumbai later this year. The company also plans to expand to Ahmedabad and Bangalore if it is successful in the two major metros.
According to IDC, Hong Kong remained the single largest market in terms of IPTV subscribers with a 55.8 per cent share in Asia-Pacific at the end of 2005. China established itself as the second-largest IPTV market followed by Taiwan in 2005.
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