According to the Assembly’s website, the country’s two largest broadband-service operators by sales, Hanarotelecom and KT Corporation are now poised to launch IPTV services as a new source of revenue.

The move comes as a welcome respite to increasingly sluggish growth in traditional broadband and telephone markets.

Data sourced from Wall Street Journal Online. additional content by WARC staff, 02 January 2008

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Revenue generated by the premium video services market, an area comprising pay-TV, mobile video, DVD, broadband video and theater/box office receipts, is expected to rise to $277 billion by 2010, up from less than $200 billion in 2006, according to a new study byiSuppli. Much of that growth will be driven by increasing revenue for pay-TV services, particularly for the fast-expanding Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) area. The pay-television industry representing about $120 billion in worldwide sales in 2006. The segment is dominated by direct-to-home satellite and digital and analog cable TV services. However, the telecom companies are entering the market with aggressive Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) offerings that are sure to spur an arms race in pay television and in quadruple-play services. IPTV is the fastest-expanding segment of the pay-TV market, with revenue expected to increase to $23.5 billion in 2010, a growth rate of 103% from $681 million in 2005.

Click for a detailed over view of each service provider

Premium Video Services Include:

* Significant offerings in the pay television market include high-definition programming, Video on Demand , digital video recording and value-added television-based services. These developments also are changing the face of television advertising.

* If advertising revenues are added to the premium video sales, the total market amounted to approximately $370 billion in 2006.

* Sales of DVD’s are slowing. During the next three to four years, DVD sales could decline by as much as 15% to 20%. With most movie libraries and television series already on DVD, Hollywood studios are generating more than half of their revenues from DVD’s—and are running out of new content to sell, making this an issue of paramount importance to them. One cause of the DVD sales deceleration is the fact that consumers have become more price-sensitive, believing that the average DVD cost of $20 is too expensive, especially compared to renting.

* As broadband speeds increase to 4Mbytes/sec. and to 6Mbytes/sec. and faster, more content companies are looking at the Internet as either their sole distribution method or as a complementary one. This is especially key as content providers strive to make their programming available to all “three screens,” i.e. PCs, televisions and mobile phones. However, broadband video transfer rates are only about 750Kbytes/sec., with some at 1.3Mbytes/sec.—still far slower than required for displaying high-quality pictures on 35-inch-plus screen-size televisions.

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by Johna Till Johnson

January 30, 2007 (Network World) — If you’re like a lot of folks, you’re probably thinking IPTV is just a tad overhyped. Service providers from AT&T to BT to India’s Reliance Infocomm have announced IPTV initiatives. Market researcher Dittberner Associates forecasts an IPTV services market of $12 billion in 2013, an increase from virtually nothing in 2005 (now that’s a long-range crystal ball). And Microsoft has been investing heavily in the technology — a sure sign that the hype-fest is at its height.

And the arguments favoring it seem singularly lame. Not that I’ve got anything against TV — on the contrary, I’m addicted to it. (C’mon, with 500 channels, what are the odds that somewhere there’s a Vin Diesel movie on?) But at first blush, it’s hard to see how delivering TV over IP makes it appreciably better.

Take the argument that IPTV provides better integration: Tomorrow’s kids will be able to surf the Web, play interactive games and watch TV all on the same screen. Oh, wait, they already do all that with peer-to-peer applications that let them download shows from the Web. Another purported IPTV plus is personalization: Viewers will be able to download virtually any show at any time — just as, um, TiVo owners do today.

So what exactly is the benefit of IPTV? For one thing, it gives telcos a sustainable consumer offering whose margins aren’t eroding. And by doing so, it introduces competition into the content-distribution business.

Carriers have been hammered by the one-two punch of the Internet and VoIP. Yahoo, Google and other search engines have chewed up the profits from directory services (not so long ago, the yellow pages used to be a cash cow for the telcos). Meantime, VoIP has been steadily driving voice revenues down to zero.

IPTV lets carriers reverse that trend by giving them a shot at selling something for which the market demand is demonstrably insatiable: content.

Aha, you may be saying, what about the growing trend toward free content ? The telcos appear to be jumping on the content bandwagon just as it’s headed for the ditch. Won’t peer-to-peer undercut the margins of content services the same way VoIP demolished voice margins?

It’s a logical worry, but here’s why I think it’s unfounded: People don’t pay for content itself; they pay for content to be packaged and delivered to them in a form factor that’s convenient. Take music: If free services destroyed the market for paid services, satellite radio wouldn’t be flourishing.

What IPTV gives carriers is the flexibility to experiment with content offerings until they hit on the packaging formula that consumers will pay money for. (Hint: I’m still waiting for that all-Vin-all-the-time channel, guys.)

And that’s the second real advantage of IPTV: It’s not about making TV better; it’s about giving more players the opportunity to get creative about packaging and delivering it to consumers. Will that result in improved services? Probably, because competition usually has that effect. So, bottom line: Despite the hype, I’ll be watching for IPTV.

Johna Till Johnson is president and senior founding partner at Nemertes Research, an independent technology research firm. She can be reached at johna@nemertes.com.
Reprinted with permission from

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Story copyright 2006 Network World, Inc. All rights reserved.

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The market is ready – here’s where and how to get IPTV now.

by David Cotriss

If you’re in the market for an IPTV service and you live in the U.S., chances are two companies come to mind: AT&T and Verizon. And for the most part you’re right – they are the only two operators with (somewhat) significant deployments and a decent chance for success. If you live in Europe, however, you’re much more likely to be able to get IPTV now, with a larger number of operators having much wider coverage areas. Coverage in the U.S. is much more limited, and your chances of living in a service area are somewhat slim. Nevertheless, the market is ready and growing, and more customers are signing up every day.

Read the entire article at: DAILYIPTV.COM

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By Marguerite Reardon
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Published: January 25, 2007

AT&T’s IPTV solution is working better than the company expected–and AT&T plans to ramp up deployments in the coming year, Chief Executive Officer Ed Whitacre said Thursday.

Whitacre commented on the expansion of AT&T’s IPTV service during the company’s fourth-quarter 2006 earnings call. By the end of the year, AT&T’s U-verse IPTV service will be available to 8 million homes, he said.

“Our fiber-to-the-node network is performing better than we had anticipated,” he said. “We’re getting better bandwidth both on the short and long loop links. And the customer feedback has been very good, outperforming what’s available from cable.”

So far, AT&T’s IPTV service is available in only 11 markets. And in those markets, it’s available only to a handful of subscribers. AT&T had said it expected to have service available in 15 markets earlier in 2006, but the company changed its projections toward the end of the year.

Since the company first began testing the service, it’s experienced glitches that have caused a series of delays. Executives on the conference call said the delays had been caused by software issues and did not reflect any problems with the network architecture, which AT&T has spent millions of dollars upgrading.

“It works and it works well,” Whitacre said of the infrastructure. “The delays and difficulties have been related to programming. And we think we are just about to get all those issues solved.”

AT&T’s foray into the TV market is a response to increased competition from cable operators, which now offer high-speed Internet access, plus TV service and telephony. To compete, AT&T and Verizon Communications have been upgrading their networks to add television to their list of services.

Unlike Verizon, which has chosen to install new fiber that reaches directly into subscribers’ homes, AT&T has extended its fiber network into neighborhoods, but is using its installed copper cables to deliver services the rest of the way.

AT&T’s fiber-to-the-node approach is much less expensive than Verizon’s fiber-to-the-home project, but in some ways it’s riskier. Because AT&T’s network does not use fiber all the way to the doorstep, its bandwidth capacity is limited compared with Verizon’s Fios network. AT&T is using a flavor of broadband technology called VDSL (very high bit rate DSL) to provide higher-capacity links over the existing copper infrastructure, which delivers the high-speed broadband and IP-based television services.

But simply getting the IPTV technology to work has not been easy. And AT&T has taken its time in introducing new services and features. For the first several months, the service was being tested in San Antonio, Texas, subscribers were not able to access high-definition programming. Today, Whitacre said all U-verse customers in all 11 markets can get HD programming.

AT&T executives wouldn’t say how many subscribers have signed up for U-verse so far, but Whitacre did say the company will make the service available to 8 million homes by the end of 2007. Among current subscribers, 75 percent have subscribed to the top-tier cable package, and 75 percent are also signed up for the highest speed Internet service, he said.

Initially, AT&T will expand U-verse throughout AT&T’s existing territory. But Rick Linder, chief financial officer for AT&T, said that within a few months, the company may also unveil plans for expanding service to the BellSouth territory (AT&T completed its $86 billion purchase of BellSouth in late December). Whitacre says he believes U-verse deployments may actually be faster in the BellSouth territory than they have been in the AT&T territory.

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IPTV is the Chinese government’s platform of choice because it is aligned to its long-term plan of unifying broadband, Internet, and television. Hence the future of the industry continues to be viewed optimistically. More resources will also be allocated to making IPTV a success because it is to play an important role in multimedia communications and upcoming major events in China. According to Fong, “The growth of IPTV will remain modest for now, and take off only after 2008. Adoption will be boosted by major events such as the Beijing Olympics in 2008, and then the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai.”

For now, however, IPTV has to cope with certain bottlenecks that have been restricting growth. “While the IPTV service is regarded by the industry as a potential revenue generator, lack of content may prove a short-term barrier to increasing uptake rapidly,” says Fong. “Current program content, which is strictly controlled by media authorities and the government, is not rich enough to attract paying users, and overseas content, which is restricted and difficult to get approval for, does not help alleviate the situation.

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By: Priyanka Pradhan | Jan 17,2007

The free service will allow viewers to access all kinds of television from across the world, over the Internet.The ad supported site will try to replicate the complete television experience, in full-screen, broadcast quality, along with channel flipping, and interactivity. The service is still undergoing trials, but thousands of people have been invited to download the software on trial.

Joost aims to offer TV-like experience enhanced with the choice, control and flexibility of Web 2.0, which enables broadcasters to get their program in front of a global Internet audience. Joost CEO Fredrik de Wahl says the team plans to offer studios, cable stations and anyone else who wants to distribute high-quality video over the Internet, a fast, efficient and cheap distribution method. He says the company will use the same peer-to-peer technology used in Skype and Kazaa.

The Joost menu allows users to switch channels with the click of a link, TiVo-like control of the content and access to any show, any time of the day. Users may also move forward or backward within a show and skip commercials. There is a line-up of sports, documentaries and music programming, but the team says this is just trial programming and that when the full launch takes place in the next few months, there will be more impressive content on offer.

The site also promises to provide a platform for the ‘best television content on the planet’ to bring users the shows from TV studios, as well as the specialist programs created by professionals and enthusiasts. The Joost team also reveals that they’re working on a native Macintosh Intel version and expect it to be available in the next few months. A Linux version is also in the works.

Read more here.

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Microsoft chairman and founder Bill Gates crowed to an audience at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, saying the company beat expectations by shipping 10.4 million Xbox 360s by the end of 2006 and claiming Microsoft would overtake Sony as the game console leader. He also called the Xbox 360 the “living device that does it all” referring to the console’s capability to connect to the Internet, download and play high-def video as well as the new IPTV function.

The IPTV service for the Xbox 360 is expected to launch toward the end of 2007. Microsoft plans to integrate its popular Xbox Live service, which currently counts 5 million registered members, into the IPTV software, allowing friends to connect, chat and play games while using the IPTV functionality. ”By integrating these industry-leading solutions, we are delivering on our promise to drive innovation and enable new connected entertainment experiences for consumers in a way that only Microsoft can,” said president of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Division Robbie Bach.

For more details:
- read the release

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