(16 May 2009 9:30 pm)

MUMBAI: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India will soon be coming out with a policy framework on content rights for IPTV.

"The intellectual property rights issue regarding converting broadcasts into content for IPTV will be resolved in the near future in the best interest of all the parties concerned, assured Trai member RN Prabhakar.

“The recommendations for converged networks that would provide consumers an access for different type of address vices on a single network will be announced soon and the spectrum for 3G, IPTV and other services would be settled very soon,” he added.

Another issue which has been hampering the growth of IPTV in India is the encryption issue. "On the technological front, accessing IPTV facilities do not require broadband connectivity; the service can also be delivered over ADSL access on telephone wire," said Prabhakar, while speaking at the inaugural session of IPTV India 2009, 4th International Conference, organised by New Delhi-based BE Exposition.

Discussing “Strategic Challenges and Opportunities for the introduction of IPTV in India,” BE Exposition MD Shashidharan noted that IPTV in India is all set to unleash the potential of fundamentally transforming the experience of watching television by bring in two-way interactivity, storage of content and greater control over the television experience.

“Service providers in India have realised the importance of shifting from voice-centric model to an IP centric model in which video and other content rich interactive services play an important role,” said Shashidharan.

UTStarcom MD India and South Asia Vijay Yadav said that IPTV would help reduce dependence on information via Internet as information on video could be reached out to the masses.

While giving his key note address, Yadav said, “While IPTV will be one of the most important factors driving broadband in India, IPTV in itself will bring about a paradigm shift in the usage of television. From being just an entertainment device it will transfer into a information dissemination device and then to a productivity tool for the masses. With IPTV, the country is expected to the talked about digital divide by make available not just the entertainment content but also providing broadcast content with educative qualities”.

In his address Prasar Bharati former engineer-in-chief LV Sharma said that IPTV’s challenge “is in competitiveness with other media like DTH and cable. “As a matter of fact, IPTV service providers should take up aggressive marketing and consumer education to promote the rapid spread of the service.”

Bharti Airtel VP Technical Puneet Garg said that the biggest challenge was not to monetize the interactive content that IPTV offered. “From push model, IPTV creates a pull model for consumers, which is a paradigm change.”

Listing the problems in adopting IPTV, Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI) president Rajesh Chharia called for more content in local languages. He felt that customers were not willing to invest in set-top-boxes especially in rural markets. With several different modes of service, convergent service was the need of the hour. The insistence that ISPs need to have a capital base of Rs 1 billion to provide IPTV service was restricting the service to only four or five players leaving out the ISPs at district and regional levels. Broadcasters were putting restrictions on the number of channels the IPTV service providers could give to consumers, due to unsolved IPR issues.

IPTV service would lead to development of a “strategic eco system” covering other areas like m-commerce and e-commerce, more content development and aggregation of data. "These possibilities were under discussion with different ministries to enable IPTV to take off," said IPTV India Forum VP Prithipal Singh.

Singh also expected that Commonwealth Games would be made available on mobile TV for which guidelines would be shortly available.