ITV

Tag: IPTV

  • MTNL launches Broadband with Wi-Fi in Delhi

    MTNL launches Broadband with Wi-Fi in Delhi

    NEW DELHI: Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd Delhi announced the launch of their IPTV-competent broadband with Wi-Fi, with a maximum speed of 2 mbps, which will help set up thousands of “Private Hot Spots” across the Capital city.

    Meanwhile, the Wi-Max system is already functioning on a trial basis in some government offices, and should be launched within this year, A K Arora, Executive Director, MTNL said at a press briefing here today.

    The broadband Wi-Fi modem works on the latest version of 802.11g of Wi-Fi standard and functions on the unlicensed 2.4 GHz band and generally provides bandwidth of 54 mbps. There cane be up to 30 concurrent users in this system.

    The MTNL will sell two types of modems for the new Wi-Fi system: one with one USB and one Ethernet port and the other with four Ethernet ports. Besides, there will be the normal LAN facility as well. MTNL is buying the modems from HT Star company.

    The users can purchase pre-paid cards for the usage, which come in various price ranges.

    “Small hotels and restaurants can set up these connections which function on radio wave and not through any cable, and allow its customers to use the Internet,” Arora explained.

    What is most attractive is the pricing of the modems and the monthly rentals.

    “It will cost the clients very little, just the security deposit and the cost of the modem. There is no setting-up cost, being on radio waves,” he added. There can be multiple users working with their computers or laptops within 40 metres of the modem inside a house or restaurant (in open space, with less physical intrusions, they can work within 60

    “The need for us to go into this is that there are at least 1.3 lakh private hot spots across the world, whereas in India there are just a thousand. Especially with the government declaring 2007 as the year of the broadband, we decided to launch this from February 8, and you can get through the Sanchar Haats anywhere. It will be set up within two days of the purchase made,” Arora claimed.

    He said that the system has already been tried at the domestic airport, Pragati Maidan, India Habitat Centre, Union Public Service Commission office, Indian Institute of Planning and Administration and many offices of the Delhi government. “The most popular has been the one at the airport,” Arora said.

    He said that setting up public hot spots will hugely help businesses, convention centres, engineering, management and medical institutions, and also private homes. “This helps us also develop our new revenue model, because there will be up to 30 users per modem, and download is free up to one GB and then it costs Rs 1 per MB, as usual our broadband.

    The registration charge is Rs 500, security deposit Rs 800 and installing and testing charges are Rs 300. The monthly rental is only Rs 150.

    The payments for usages can be made through credit cards as well purchasable prepaid scratch cards.
    “Suppose you go to a restaurant and are not sure of being over charged, the scratch card is of major help,” explained a senior engineer present at the press conference.

    Our aim was to become the dominant player in the field, Arora stressed as the factor behind the decision to launch early. Besides, he said, there will be 90 lakh broadband users by 2007, of which MTNL will have to give 50 lakh connections.

    Arora said that Wi-Max is already there in use in Delhi. “This room in which we are having the meeting is Wi-Max enabled, and there are some other government offices as well. Trail runs are on, and we can launch when the government gives permission for the spectrum, which should be the end of this year,” Arora hoped.

    Arora also announced the launch of MTNL’s CDMA mobiles, and asserted that with this, the Nigam has become the only service provider to operate both CDMA and GSM services.

    The handset comes for really cheap: the original handset, Huwai C 300, costs Rs 3,500, but MTNL is selling it for just Rs 1,499 paid upfront (VAT extra), with Rs 1,499 free talk time in local network CDMA, GSM and landline) as well, for one year.

    MTNL is also giving Rs 25 worth talk time free to other networks, for a period of a week.

    The pulse would be of 15 seconds and the rate, Arora said, would be Rs 0.10 for a pulse for local calls. The STD charges would be Rs 2.40 per pulse, he said.

  • IPTV likely to generate significant revenue within first three years: Accenture survey

    IPTV likely to generate significant revenue within first three years: Accenture survey

    MUMBAI: More than half of communications industry executives believe that Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) can generate significant revenue within the first three years of service, according to findings of a survey released by Accenture and the Economist Intelligence Unit.

    The survey of nearly 350 executives from telecom, broadcasting and media companies across 46 countries in the US, Europe and Asia revealed industry-wide confidence in the longer-term outlook for IPTV, with 60 percent believing that IPTV will generate significant revenues within three years.

    However, confidence in the short-term outlook remains mixed, with slightly more than half (52 per cent) of respondents saying they are not confident in the ability of IPTV to generate significant revenues within the next 12 months. On the other hand, one-fifth (20 per cent) of respondents said they are confident or very confident, and more than one-quarter (28 per cent) said they are somewhat to fairly confident, that IPTV will generate significant revenues within a year.
    The report notes that the business case for IPTV, its value-added benefits and its potential remain strong. In the long-term, the key to achieving high performance through IPTV is to be visionary, ambitious and open to innovation from many sources. For the shorter term, the key is to quickly adapt to consumer feedback and jump over technology hurdles.

    When asked what they believed would be the principal revenue source for IPTV, about half (46 per cent) of the industry executives surveyed selected advertising. However, network operators, as a subset of all respondents — which included equipment vendors, consumer electronic companies, content providers and broadcasters/studios — disagreed, with three-quarters (74 per cent) of network operators saying they believe that subscription fees for premium content will provide the largest recurring revenue stream, followed by basic content subscription fees and then ad fees.

    This difference in opinions reflects the broad uncertainty around how media will be delivered and what customers will be willing to pay for. Carriers are used to subscription revenues and believe that the IPTV experience will soon be comparable to or even better than current video offerings, whereas media executives are more cautious and skeptical of a scenario where a new revenue stream is created so rapidly. The reality is that both revenue streams will be important, but the challenge will be to harness the power of this new technology to create a new video experience that makes consumers and advertisers willing to pay more than they do today.

    When asked to identify reasons for pursuing the IPTV market, the greatest number of respondents (42 per cent) cited new revenue streams, followed by acquiring new customers (28 per cent) and increasing sale of broadband access connections (21 per cent).

    Overwhelmingly, executives believe that discounted pricing through service bundling will be the primary motivation behind consumer spending. Nearly two-thirds (64 per cent) of all respondents — and three-quarters (74 per cent) of network operators surveyed — said they believe that discounted service bundles provide the greatest enticement to buy IPTV. The ability to move content between devices was also cited as an important enticement, selected by 38 percent of respondents, as was the convenience of a single bill for multiple services, selected by 31 per cent of respondents.

    Yet there are obstacles to IPTV adoption. One-quarter (25 per cent) of respondents said that the primary short-term obstacle to IPTV adoption is a quality-of-service issue relating to unproven architectures, low bandwidth and other technology issues. The same number (25 percent) said they believe that quality-of-service issues will be resolved over the next three years, leaving stiffer competition from alternative TV providers as the toughest challenge to the adoption of IPTV. Another challenge to IPTV adoption, cited by 19 percent of respondents, is high subscription fees due to the high cost of network access and equipment.

    When asked which types of companies are most likely to generate revenue from IPTV, the vast majority (87 per cent) of respondents selected content providers, followed by telecommunications providers (72 per cent). Not surprising, more than two-thirds (69 per cent) of respondents said that traditional broadcasters have the least to gain from IPTV, a view held strongly by respondents across all company types, including broadcasters themselves.

  • IPTV touted as the new growth frontier for telecom, internet service providers

    IPTV touted as the new growth frontier for telecom, internet service providers

    MUMBAI: IPTV is being touted as the new growth frontier for both telecom and internet service providers with over 30 deployments globally to-date.

    Most providers are offering triple-play services of video, data and voice to prevent churn and arrest falling revenues from traditional telephony.

    Frost And Sullivan has come out with a report IPTV: Remote(ly) in Control. Frost and Sullivan principal consultant Jayesh Easwaramony says, “Despite the rapidly developing IPTV market, penetration remains low in most countries, leaving even the largest IPTV provider in the red.

    “Decision makers are seized with doubts on the right service mix to entice consumers, the ideal business model and the payoff from sizeable investments in upgrading their networks,” adds Easwaramony.

    Unfamiliarity with the unique appeal of relevant content adds a new dimension to IPTV services and the challenge of making it a viable venture.

  • Time Broadband to manufacture Amino IPTV boxes in India, plans to raise $70 million

    Time Broadband to manufacture Amino IPTV boxes in India, plans to raise $70 million

    MUMBAI: Time Broadband Services Pvt. Ltd. (TBSPL) plans to raise $70 million for manufacture of IPTV set-top boxes (STBs) and expansion of its content delivery network (CDN).

    The company has exclusively tied up with UK-based Amino Communications Ltd. to manufacture AmiNET125 H.264 AVC (MPEG-4, Part 10) compliant STBs in India. TBSPL will have the rights to sell these STBs in India, Middle East and parts of East Africa. The benefit of manufacturing these STBs in India will be to bring the cost below $100.

    “This is a significant development for us as India is a potentially big market for IPTV. We have manufacturing arrangements also in China and Taiwan,” says Amino Communications Ltd. vice president/general manager Roy Kirsopp.

    TBSPL, which has already raised $10 million and got a further $5 million from Dimensions Group, will raise a further $35 million in its second round of funding. This will be towards expanding the CDN for IPTV.

    “We are in talks for second round of investment and have got term sheets. We hope to tie up the funds by February-March,” says TBSPL managing director and CEO Sujata Dev.

    Another $35 million will be raised through sister company Broadband Tech Pvt. Ltd. for manufacture of STBs. The company is in talks with three consumer electronics companies for this. “We are negotiating with three state governments for getting subsidy. We are in talks with consumer electronics companies for the financing and manufacture of the STBs,” says Dev. The company is looking at Kolkata, Chennai or another city to set up the manufacturing facility.

    Amino has been paid an upfront amount of $1 million. “We have guaranteed Amino $10-12 million over 18 months. Dimensions Broadband UK has committed a $7 million exposure for this,” says Dev. The contract involves a fixed license fee and a royalty to Amino on the STBs sold.

    The AmiNET125 STB is designed on the DaVinci SoC chip from Texas Instruments and is integrated with Kasenna middleware and Verimatrix content protection.

    “The deal will enable TBSPL to execute mass deployments of our “MY TIME” IPTV package. STBs play the most critical role in the IPTV business.

    This relationship with a leading industry partner like Amino would further strengthen TBSPL in establishing the business matrix in the Indian market, capable of providing a total end-to-end CDN solution to telecom operator partners intending to launch IPTV,” says Dev.

    Adds Kirsopp: “We see opportunity in India, China and South America. This deal validates our licensing model where we tie up with local partners for local manufacturing.”

  • ‘You cannot build a sample on psychographics’ : LV Krishnan – TAM India CEO

    ‘You cannot build a sample on psychographics’ : LV Krishnan – TAM India CEO

    Media research agency Tam is in an expansion mode. Recently, it increased the number of peoplemeters from 4800 to 6917. And as direct-to-home (DTH) and conditional access system (Cas) took root, it also came out with the Elite Panel. The aim: to give broadCasters and media planners an idea of what the cr?me de la cr?me consume.

     

    Indiantelevision.com’s Ashwin Pinto caught up with Tam India CEO LV Krishnan to find out how the agency is gearing up to meet the challenges that new distribution technologies are throwing up.

     

    Excerpts:

    With conditional access system (Cas) and direct-to-home (DTH) taking root, what is Tam’s strategy going to be?

    We expected digitisation to happen sooner or later. We have been getting ready for it since a year. In April 2006 we released our first study under the Blinx series where we had the first DTH penetration data coming out. We also did a multi-city study on what was happening on Cas. We looked at the international availability of technology that could be used to measure these two platforms.

     

    We began work on the digital peoplemeter which we call the TVM5. Today all the six metros are completely aligned to the TVM5 digital peoplemeter. The peoplemeters are technologically hybrid. This was stage one done last year. We expanded the panel two weeks back and introduced the Elite Panel. After that, quite a large number of homes in the Elite Panel have moved onto DTH. In the regular panel a significant amount of homes are converted to Cas.

     

    This is clubbed with the C&S (cable & satellite) data and sent to the industry for usage. While this happens and the market moves from analogue to digital, there is growth in DTH and Cas for both panels. To validate this we are doing a regular penetration study. The data for this month will be out shortly. We will do studies in February and March to find out DTH and Cas penetration in the notified areas. It will be matched with our Elite Panel penetration also to see if it matches with those kinds of homes. Then data will go out to the user.

    Will Cas or DTH prevail and why?

    It is difficult to say which one will succeed. Each has advantages. Finally it is the service ability that counts. The demand is there. Pricing is important.

     

    Then there is the marketing activities done. Feedback is that demand for set top boxes is rising dramatically. But the service ability is the need of the hour. This is preventing more penetration.

    Tam has also increased the number of Peoplemeters and coverage area. Could you talk about this?

    We have been working with the joint industry body (JIB) for the last year and a half to look at the next step. Hence the decision to go to 7000 peoplemeters.

     

    Three things prompted the expansion. Firstly the universe has changed since the last expansion that happened in 2002 – 2003. The number of C&S homes has increased. New towns have been added on different strata of the population. The second reason is the sheer amount of fragmentation that is happening. With the number of channels available, TV viewing has become more fragmented. To look at data from specific segments of the population you need to go deeper. The Hindi speaking markets which is the North and West is where the bulk of the new metering has been done.

     

    In the South, the time spent on viewing is higher in proportion to the number of TV homes present. More samples have been added there. Then we wanted to plan for the future with new platforms coming in. You will see further fragmentation with DTH and Cas arriving. IPTV is also soon to launch. We wanted to be ready for this change.

    How much has Tam invested and what have the challenges been?

    The expansion has taken 10 months of work. We started last February. We moved from 73 towns to 151. We brought in the digital peoplemeters. At the same time we needed to ensure that the homes are counseled to deliver quality research. It has been great working along with the industry. Over Rs 250 million has gone into the expansion.

    Why did it take it so much time to expand?

    We touched 4800 in 2003. In 2004 there was no establishment study. We had to wait for 2005 to see the kind of growth rates that have happened. When we got NRS 2005 there was also census data for 2001 which came out in 2005. That data came to us in the second half of 2005.
    ‘We are examining the possibility of expanding the Elite Panel to other markets like Bangalore, Chennai and Kolkata‘

    How do you choose the homes and how is user compliance ensured?

    The homes are chosen on the basis of key control variables divided into primary and secondary variables. The former are socio economic classes, the ability to watch C&S or terrestrial television. Number of home members is another variable. Apart from that, secondary variables include ratio of colour to black and white TV sets. In 2007 we have added a new variable, which is the presence of kids. A metric is used to gauge the compliance of a home to the peoplemeter which is button pushing. So we do surprise checks with these homes. Once we are sure that they are stable we add them to the reporting data.

    Rival ratings service aMap talks about the importance of pyschographic profiling and that 25+ SEC A is not enough if you want to know what for instance an executive consumes. Your views on this?

    You can include additional variables. However a panel needs to be put on strong foundation stones. They have to be stable over a period of time. Then you look at SEC, cable and satellite or terrestrial. Pyschographic variables are ever changing in nature. You cannot build a sample on psychographics. If you list pyschographic variables, which could be 100, you diminish your sample to miniature levels.

     

    You cannot have attitudinal factors being linked to viewing behaviour patterns. Attitudinal factors can be included in one off studies. But to expect a panel to give you solutions for every little thing will not be possible. A panel is supposed to give continuous behaviour changes so that you can do projections for the future based on past behaviour.

     

    In a dynamic market you have a cable operator changing the channel line-up, marketing etc. If you can pick up these changes and tie it to the numbers you can make better sense of the data rather than try to report things based on things that are affected by changing attitudes. It is important to have data that gives a clear picture of the changing marketplace rather than have a variable that is there for the sake of it.

    How has the channel standings been affected by the expansion of the panel?

    In general the expanded panel has come in with Cas implementation. Pay channels have taken a hit in Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata. But the figures will improve as homes move to Cas or DTH. Distribution is key in the towns. Also when you geographically expand your ratings presence you see a difference in terms of power cuts. This environmental factor also affects channel shares. A strong distribution of channels in smaller towns will mean that share is not affected.

     

    Regional channels share has gone up. So has news. The free to air channels are also faring better. The mainline channels continue to stay strong. Certainly there is more fragmentation. Music and the English entertainment channels are stagnating. This has to do with content along with marketing. Colour TV sets have jumped to 70 per cent in the C&S homes. Remote control penetration has also grown. There is faster surfing and more sampling. The ad rate viewership is slipping vis-?-vis programme viewership. There is a 20 per cent difference. News has eaten into the share of GEC.

    What findings has the Elite Panel thrown up?

    The elite segment spends a limited amount of time on television. It is around an hour and a half each day compared to two hours and 10 minutes for the general panel. For those who own a DVD player it goes down further to around an hour and 10 minutes. The more the leisure opportunities present, the less he/she watches television. They are extremely choosy. What is interesting is that although the main language of 45 per cent of the Elite Panel is English, the time spent on watching Hindi content is more watched. English entertainment needs to touch the heart of the consumer better.

     

    It is clear that the members of the Elite Panel do not approve of the quality of content on the English entertainment channels, which is one reason why they are not spending much time watching television. They are basically surfing through the English channels and then going back to the Hindi shows. The English channels need to understand what the viewer requires. The elite segment represents an opportunity.

    Can you highlight any other findings that emerged from the Elite Panel?

    Firstly we need to segment general entertainment into two parts. One is soaps and the other is reality shows. The former is consumed by the housewife while the latter is consumed by the youth. On a national scale you have one TV set homes mostly. But in the Elite Panel there are multiple TV set homes. So while the overall numbers are the same when you break it down into soaps and reality shows the viewing is split evenly in the Elite Panel. This means that the second TV set is being used to watch reality shows by the younger members. This gives channels an idea of the kind of shows that can be created for the Elite versus what is being done for the rest of the country.

     

    The Elite segment has nuclear families with bigger homes. There are two kinds of homes. One is executive which has lesser kid’s, while some of them are Dink (double income no kid’s) homes. The business family is larger. The day parts both watch are different as also is the content.

     

    Another difference is the behaviour of this audience towards weekends. In a national panel time spent declines. Here it goes up. News is watched a lot. Sports viewing depends on the significance of an event. It needs to be interesting. They will watch an event whether it is cricket or tennis or Formula one if the match is interesting. Schumacher’s last Grand Prix touched a rating of over three in the Elite Panel while in the national panel it was 0.22. Viewing of sports depends more on the quality of the match rather than on the tournament per se. Kids and movies fare better on the Elite Panel.

    What has the media feedback been like for this service?

    It has been good. We are examining the possibility of expanding it to other markets like Bangalore, Chennai and Kolkata. It has been two years since we started work on the panel. The challenge was to keep the panel intact. We have 125 homes in Delhi and 125 homes in Mumbai.

     

    Technologically we had to make sure that data could be downloaded which is not easy given that the telecom infrastructure is already overloaded. We did special techniques to recruit homes. We spoke to them in terms of what we are trying to do. We had trained people visiting the homes with laptops.

    Can sports viewing for non-cricket grow?

    There are some learnings from cricket. Firstly you need star appeal. Would you watch cricket without Sachin, Saurav, Dravid and Dhoni?

     

    Secondly media coverage is crucial. The reason why the soccer World Cup last year fared so well was due to the enormous coverage and hype in the media particularly in newspapers. Then there needs to be drama. Cricket has controversy, which creates aura. For instance Saurav coming back sparked debate.

    What is your outlook for radio this year?

    We have expanded our measuring to 32 stations now for AdEx. Earlier it was 13 stations. We are seeing radio ad expenditure growing.
  • Bharti floats subsidiary company for DTH

    Bharti floats subsidiary company for DTH

    MUMBAI: Bharti Airtel Limited has floated a wholly owned subsidiary, Bharti Telemedia, for its direct-to-home (DTH) services.

    The plan is to launch DTH this calendar year, but this will depend on whether the telecom major manages to get transponder space from the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro).

    Indiantelevision.com was the first to report that Bharti would be entering into the DTH business, joining Anil Ambani’s Reliance, Kalanithi Maran’s Sun Direct and the existing players Dish TV, Tata Sky and DD Direct Plus.

    Bharti also hopes to launch its IPTV services in the first quarter of the next fiscal, a source in the company says. UTStarcom is the digital service vendor for Bharti’s IPTV including the headend and the digital set-top boxes (STBs).

     
    “There are issues we still have to sort out on technology, cost and reach. IPTV could have limitations in India at this stage. DTH can give us a wider market,” says the source.

    Bharti had started test runs for IPTV with UTStarcom but later invited other vendors as well. Subsequently, it has been using UTStarcom for its IPTV build up.

     
    The telecom major has also announced the acquisition of a submarine network cable system from Network i2i, which is jointly owned by Singtel and a Bharti group company, for an overall consideration of $110 million. This will be subject to obtaining the requisite approvals.

    Bharti Airtel is structured into three strategic business units – mobile, broadband & telephone (B&T) and Enterprise services. The mobile business provides mobile and fixed wireless services using GSM technology across 23 telecom circles. The B&T unit provides broadband and telephone services in 94 cities while the Enterprise services provide end-to-end telecom solutions to corporate customers and national and international long distance services to carriers.

    Bharti has an aggregate of 33.71 million subscribers (as of December-end 2006), consisting of 31.97 million mobile customers.

  • Security concern over social networking, user-generated content: Deloitte

    Security concern over social networking, user-generated content: Deloitte

    MUMBAI: Deloitte’s Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) industry group has predicted that this year expanding social networks will create a greater need for security and copyright protection technologies

    Meanwhile, user-generated content (UGC) from blogs, amateur filmmakers and others will both complement and threaten traditional media outlets.

    With global internet traffic reaching capacity, investment in laying new cable or lighting existing fiber may be needed — but may be stifled by continuing declines in wholesale capacity prices.

    Predictions 2007 is a series of three reports examining emerging developments and how they will shape the TMT market. They were written by the Deloitte TMT industry group with input from industry analysts and executives. Each report includes recommendations on how to best take advantage of these trends.

    Key trends identified in the reports include:

    — Social Networking Evolves — Social networks will continue to expand, creating a need for identification improvements, the ability to remove copyrighted material quickly, and making downloads as instantaneous as possible.

    — Digital Storage Expansion Driven by Laws — Digital storage needs will be impacted by companies’ legal obligations to keep years and petabytes worth of data, with costs passed onto the user.

    — Internet Capacity Woes — With the Internet reaching capacity, investment in laying new cable or lighting existing fiber may be needed

    — but may be stifled by continuing declines in wholesale capacity prices. Solutions will be found when Web surfers rebel after quality of service declines.

    — The Next Killer Application — Mobile TV may be the next killer application, taking video content off the phone and onto a device with a better screen.

    — Reinvention of TV — IPTV is poised to launch as a reinvention of television, rather than a pale imitation of current services. Operators could position the service as an affordable way for all content providers to deliver niche media to a growing mass audience, without the commission costs of broadcast-network middlemen.

    — The Consumer as the Media Mogul — UGC is increasing. Blogs, amateur filmmakers and others are creating content that complements — or perhaps threatens — traditional media outlets. Smart media companies will serve up user-generated content as a powerful promotional vehicle and use it as an
    effective medium for scouting talent.

    — It’s a New Media World After All — New media metrics are taking over, with old media metrics becoming a thing of the past. Development of comparable statistics will emerge, enabling companies, their customers and their investors to more accurately gauge performance.

    — DVD versus Vod: No Clear Winner in Sight — Simultaneous availability of movies on DVD and Vod will make them closer competitors.

  • International Datacasting Corporation wins contract from Shin Broadband for New Asia IPTV service

    International Datacasting Corporation wins contract from Shin Broadband for New Asia IPTV service

    MUMBAI: Shin Broadband Internet in Thailand has awarded a contract for a next generation Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) push video on demand service in Asia to International Datacasting Corporation to provide IDC’s Datacast XD Content Management and Distribution software.

    The contract calls for the initial roll-out phase of the system with options for expansion as the service reaches full deployment.

    Shin Broadband Internet pushes High Definition (HD) movies over the Shin Satellite Ipstar system across Asia to low cost consumer Set-Top-Boxes (STBs) located in user’s homes. IDC’s Datacast XD software will be used to manage the delivery of this content on this network.

    IDC is also responsible for the project management and system integration of the project which also utilizes Irdeto encryption for content security inside the STBs which are manufactured by Homecast of Korea.

    Ipstar is a new satellite network that provides business and residential Internet service throughout the Asia-Pacific region. The total number of satellite user terminals provided by Shin Satellite is currently over 70,000 and growing.

    The new PUSH-VOD service uses excess Ipstar satellite bandwidth when available to push HDTV movies onto the local hard disk drive of the Homecast STB, storing digitized movies for later use. The new PUSH-VOD subscription service ensures that users receive new movies daily and operation of the STB is similar to the way a consumer plays back movies from a PVR/DVR at any time.

    The STB utilizes the most modern MPEG AVC/ H.264 video compression technology available to provide the highest quality video possible along with multi-channel sound. The STB inside of the customer’s house is connected to the TV and to the Shin’s Ipstar terminal.

    Ron Clifton the President and CEO of International Datacasting Corporation said “Shin Satellite is one of the most advanced service providers in Asia and we are delighted that they selected our technology and recognized our skills and experience in integrating IPTV systems of this type.

    Our Datacast XD technology was originally developed to meet the needs of satellite, cable and IPTV customers for a broad range of multimedia file transfer and streaming applications. The inclusion of Datacast XD in a consumer set-top-box has opened new doors for this product line in a rapidly growing market and hopefully this opportunity will be the first of many such consumer applications.”

    Teerayuth Boonchote, Vice President of Ipstar, said that “Shin Satellite and our sister company Shin Broadband Internet are excited by the potential of this new service offering to our Ipstar customers which we will initially roll-out in Thailand. A success in Thailand means we’ll expand the service throught our Asian footprint.

    IDC was chosen because they have demonstrated commitment and performance in terms of their proven Datacast XD content delivery technology which is easily integrated into set-top-boxes and because they have an excellent history of successful systems integration projects.”

  • Media Development Authority of Singapore unveils two-tier license framework for IPTV

    Media Development Authority of Singapore unveils two-tier license framework for IPTV

     MUMBAI: The Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA) has rolled out a new two-tier license framework for Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) that aims to further facilitate the growth of IPTV services in Singapore, to tangible benefits for the industry and consumers.

    “We took into consideration the developments in technology in a rapidly evolving media landscape and local industry feedback when factoring flexibility in this license framework to address the needs of niche IPTV players vis-à-vis mass market IPTV players while ensuring that consumer interests are not compromised,” explained MDA director media policy Ling Pek Ling.

    “This will enable the entry of more industry players looking to provide a wide range of IPTV services to consumers including those who are currently not served or not well served by existing broadcasters. At the same time, consumers can look forward to richer and diversified content.”

    In line with the new license framework, MDA has issued SingNet Pet Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Singapore Telecommunications Limited, a Nationwide subscription TV service license to roll out commercial IPTV services.

    According to an official release, the tiered IPTV license framework offers service providers two types of licenses:

    – Nationwide subscription TV License: Players providing services that have wide reach (over 100,000 subscribers) and impact. They will be awarded a Nationwide License, similar to that for a mass market pay TV operator.

    – Niche Subscription TV License: This facilitates the entry of new niche players offering IPTV services which have limited reach (100,000 subscribers or less) and impact. The licensee would be subject to a lighter license framework. For example, niche licensees will not be required to carry the local free-to-air channels.

    Where the subscriber base exceeds 100,000 subscribers, the following secondary criteria will be used to determine if the operator can still qualify as a Niche player to allow those targeting niche market segments like the expatriate community and hotels to grow their business and improve their business case:

    – Location: whether the service is offered chiefly to specific non-residential locations in Singapore.

    – Language: whether there is a high percentage of foreign language content.

  • IOL Broadband to raise $390 million via QIP

    IOL Broadband to raise $390 million via QIP

    MUMBAI: IOL Broadband Ltd is in the process of raising Rs 390 million through qualified institutional placement (QIP) to part-fund its IPTV roll out in new cities. Prime Securities is lead managing the issue that will close on Saturday.

    “We are raising Rs 390 million which will be used for expanding into new cities,” says IOL Broadband executive director Oberai.

    IOL Broadband will soon soft launch its IPTV services on the state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) network in Bangalore.

    The company, which has a non exclusive tie up with BSNL for setting up the content delivery network, is also looking at launching IPTV in Kolkata, Chennai, Delhi and Bhopal.

    IOL is yet to make a commercial launch of its IPTV services in MUmbai, the first city where it kickstarted operations on the MTNL network.

    The company has also signed a revenue share agreement for its IPTV service with Anytime, a consortium of major Hollywood Studios comprising Disney, Fox, Warner, and Universal which will provide access to Hollywood movies.

    Bennett Coleman & Co Ltd (BCCL), which is the holding company of the Times Group, has picked up a small stake in IOL Broadband for Rs 50 million.