(20 March 2009 7:15 pm)

NEW DELHI: India has the largest potential for growth in the IPTV sector, but has the slowest migration to digital technology if one goes by the number of broadband connectivity.

This was the general view of speakers at a session on IPTV at the Convergence India 2009.

CopperGate president William Simmelink, Cisco’s Asia Pacific region business development manager Yongsub Lee, and UTStarcom’s MD for South Asia Vijay Yadav said while IPTV leading to home networking and a host of value-added services could be a boon for the user, this may take some more time in countries like India.

One of the reasons for this was that the country was still dependent on copper or co-axial cables and had not adequately shifted to optic fibre as some parts of the world had done. At the same time, the insatiable thirst of the Indian consumer for TV and other Vas would be a strong driving force for this.

Simmelink said one major problem faced in the growth of IPTV was the absence of high-speed wiring and copper cables were an impediment. However, he claimed that CooperGate was setting up one IPTV connection every seven seconds somewhere in the world.

He said that apart from video-on-demand and other Vas, the increasing number of TV sets or personal computers in each home made it necessary to switch over to IPTV which was now much more than mere entertainment. It helped provide Internet Data Services, telephony, e-governance, and video streaming.

Lee said competition would drive the growth of IPTV in a country like India. But IPTV by itself was not profitable as there was too much dependence on broadband.

Cisco and other companies could help the service providers in increasing access to IPTV, which among other things enable live broadcasts, video-on-demand, webTV, T-Commerce which include e-governance, target advertising, e-learning, and infotainment.

Chairing the session, Yadav said IPTV could help bridge the digital divide in a way faster than any other technology.

In reply to a question, he said India was probably the only country in the world where up to 150 channels were available for as little as three dollars.

Also Read:

Government clarifies on IPTV guidelines