Hailed as the next big thing in digital home entertainment, IPTV is still in its infancy in the country and might take another four months to gather steam.
This, despite the recent announcement by Reliance that it would invest $500 million in IPTV infrastructure (which it was planning in the last four years) and state-owned MTNL having launched it a year ago.
Bharti Airtel and Videsh Sanchar Nigam (to be re-named Tata Communications) are planning to provide the service by end of the current financial year.
IPTV uses the internet to deliver content over a broadband network to subscribers' TV sets. Apart from traditional broadcast TV, it offers services such as video-and music-on-demand, video-conferencing facilities and time-shifted TV (the facility to watch previous week's programmes).
Even though the current number of users is not available (industry puts it much below 10,000), organisations such as International Data Corporation (IDC) expect IPTV subscribers to reach 1 million by 2011. This is minuscule, though, compared with the government's target of 500 million telecom users by 2010.
"A lack of awareness on the benefits of IPTV, such as its interactivity and edutainment (education plus entertainment) is the major reason for the lack of its popularity in the country. The current requirement is to educate broadband users, who are the potential customers, about the service," according to MTNL executive director J Gopal. MTNL, the state-owned telecom major had launched the service early this year.
Another hurdle before industry is the high cost of IPTV set-top boxes (STBs), that come at Rs 8,000 apiece. Compare the STB prices with that of Conditional Access System (CAS) and Direct-To-Home (DTH) services that are priced at Rs 2,000 and Rs 4,000 respectively, Gopal said.
A set-top box is a device that connects to a TV and an external source of signal (co-axial cable, satellite or ethernet cable), turning the signal into content which is then displayed on the TV screen.
Another public sector company, Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) has also rolled out the services in certain circles, making it the only other company to offer the services.
The company has launched the services in Pune and is gearing up for launches in Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore among other places.
A key issue before industry is the lack of proper infrastructure. According to Reliance Communications President (Home and Enterprise Business) Prakash Bajpai, IPTV's growth would depend on the last mile connectivity (conventional copper wire connection between operator's and customer premises) and companies would look at a faster rollout of these connections.
Mirroring the sentiment, Sumit Modi, a telecom analyst with Emkay Shares said, "Last mile connectivity and lack of mass broadband penetration are the issues, given the fact that the broadband and fixed-line services of leading telecom companies such as Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications have limited last mile presence."
"The low broadband penetration in India is the biggest challenge for IPTV roll-out," said Nokia Siemens Networks APAC Technology GroupIndia lead, Manoj Gurnani.
There were only 2.43 million broadband subscribers as on April 30 and these are slated to rise to 4.21 million by April next year.
However, there is much to look for. Cisco India & SAARC lead consulting architect, Chandan Mendiratta, said, "India has around 65 million cable and satellite homes. If even 10 per cent take IPTV, we are talking about 6.5 million homes and this is outside the enterprise uptake."
Tech Mahindra President International Operations C P Gurnani said, "I don't see any insurmountable challenges before industry and the ones such as infrastructure, broadband connectivity and others can be tided over."
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