MUMBAI: Chinese media has reported that China Telecom and China Netcom are well positioned for a massive launch of IPTV in the country. It is estimated that between 5000,000 and one million households will be able to receive the service by the end of 2005.

However, the French network vendor Alcatel pointed out that it would depend on the upgrade of the existing networks to handle bandwidths of between 2 Mbps and 4 Mbps, necessary for IPTV reception.

"If broadband coverage with download speeds of 2 Mbps to 4 Mbps is more than five per cent of the current 40 million broadband users, that's about two million users," company's vice-president of the broadband video services task force Susan Wang has been quoted in a report as saying.

China Telecom and China Netcom have earlier initiated small-scale trials of IPTV services in 10 provinces with Alcatel IPTV.