(13 January 2006 2:00 pm)

MUMBAI: A recent study conducted by the US research firm Dittberner Associates has revealed that the global IPTV equipment market growth rate is not directly proportional to the pace with which the IPTV subscriber base is growing.

The study says, although the number of IPTV subscribers will reach 53 million globally in 2013, up from about 2 million at the end of 2005, the incremental IPTV equipment market will only reach $336 million in 2013 - up from $30 million in 2005. The report "IPTV Impact on Public Networks" is authored by Dittberner Associates broadband research wing director James Heath.

Heath's explanation for the projected disparity is that most future IPTV customers will already have broadband service is partly what accounts . "Other studies on IPTV's effect on network equipment market growth ignore the fact that most IPTV subscribers over the next seven years will be high-speed Internet access subscribers already,"

According to Heath, the "IPTV's subscriber base will not become significant for a decade and the incremental investment per subscriber will be low. "Combined together, these provide a small boost to forecasted DSL, FTTH and router sales," he says.

The report analyzes the impact of offering IPTV on the access, aggregation and backbone networks. It also states that the size of the access equipment market is greatly affected by the number of popular TV channels that are multi-cast to the Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer (DSLAM), while the backbone market will be greatly affected by the popularity of video-on-demand.