The majority of Asia’s IPTV operators are trying to catch up with the established pay-TV platforms. HD, PVR and multichannel services are quickly becoming ubiquitous while IPTV operators are struggling to attract subscribers by offering these services alone.


But considering IPTV’s inherent strengths and bullish predictions for growth figures for the region, experts believe that combined with triple or quadruple play, IPTV offers a unique service proposition.


IPTV’s two-way infrastructure naturally lends itself to ondemand, interactive and timeshifted services. Plus, IPTV operators and advertisers have an ability to understand exactly what the consumer wants to watch and when they want to watch it. The key is to deliver on-demand, interactive, personalized TV experience, which will enable viewers to progress from being the passive recipient of linear broadcasts to an empowered consumer who dictates the content they watch, where they watch it and when they watch it.

According to Infonetics Research, the IPTV equipment market in the Asia Pacific region is expected to reach $2.1 billion by 2009. Its report also predicts the number of IPTV subscribers in APAC will soar to 21.5 million by 2009, representing more than half the total IPTV subscribers worldwide.


Alan Delaney, Tandberg Television IPTV Business Development Director for EMEA and APAC, is excited by IPTV’s potential in Asia. “If IPTV is to increasingly gain a foothold in Asia, where satellite and cable account for over 97% of the pay TV market, it needs to use the inherent advantages in its network architecture to meet the needs of a consumer who increasingly seeks choice, mobility and interactivity,” said Delaney. In future, he notes IPTV operators will use advanced head-ends and encoding capabilities to cover distribution to multiple devices, enabling a single piece of content to be delivered and consumed in multiple ways.


Delaney acknowledged the challenge for operators is to provide an on-demand, interactive, personalised TV experience, while simultaneously encouraging a mind-shift in more traditional viewers to encourage them to engage and interact with their television. “This will enable viewers to progress from being the passive recipient of linear broadcasts to an active, empowered consumer who dictates the content they watch, where they watch it and when they watch it,” said Delaney.


While there’s no doubt content is a critical part of the equation, content protection services say piracy is equally important. Andy Mathieson, Director, Latens Systems said, “In IPTV – both in Asia and the rest of the world - it’s still true to say that many IPTV operators deploy Conditional Access (CA) to satisfy their content partners rather than to fulfill a desire for greater security.”


Mathieson believes many IPTV operators act this way as they are relatively new and haven’t yet come under serious concerted attack from pirates.


“Misunderstanding just how determined the hacker community can be is a potentially fatal mistake.


It’s certain that as the more successful IPTV operations grow, they will reach a point at which hackers can profitably produce and market stolen content, at which point the operator must hope that its CA is secure enough to defend against the attack,” said Mathieson. He asserts Asia should not be treated as uniform region, as there are differences in culture, network infrastructure and economic circumstances.


But he sees the cable industry is in better shape, as the risk of hacking is much better understood.


Thierry A. Raymaekers, Managing Director, Marketing Asia Pacific, Irdeto Access BV, agrees that piracy is a serious concern.


Referring to Irdeto’s expertise in securely encrypting video content for transport via IP networks, Raymaekers said carrier-class encryption and secure device identification ensure that only paying customers are able to access content. And over-the-network security upgrades mean piracy attempts are stopped before they can affect revenues. Also, operators will be able to reap enhanced revenues as Irdeto’s solution offers next generation IPTV functionality, such as time-shifted TV and network PVR, providing new revenue generating opportunities.


“Clients have realised that in order to continue to provide high-quality premium content for viewers they must show proof that the broadcast from them can be encrypted in the public domain, any stored content must be secure and copy protection mechanisms must be in place,” he said.


“They will also need to protect revenue streams by ensuring that all content viewed is paid for. Typical IP security measures are not adequate for IPTV as it is often assumed that the receiver is a trusted environment; knowing where the content has been sent does not mean that it’s secured or protected. Therefore clients need more than control over access to service. What will be needed is pay-TV content security, another layer of security above and beyond IP security. Lastly it must be known and trusted by content providers, as without premium content there is no sustainable IPTV business.”


For its part, Irdeto signed a partnership with Alticast, interactive middleware solution provider for digital broadcasting services, LG-Nortel and Kaon Media, set up box manufactures based in Korea, to deliver an advanced end-to-end IPTV solution worldwide. The Irdeto IPTV SoftClient is a software security client for the protection of broadcast, on-demand and PVR content on IP networks. The solution is integrated with a variety of industry-leading set top boxes, VOD servers and middleware solutions to provide ease of deployment for telco and broadband operators.


Irdeto also signed a strategic partnership with Chinese telecom equipment manufacturer Huawei Technologies to jointly sell end-to-end solutions to the worldwide IPTV market.


Following this partnership, Irdeto and Huawei recently signed a deal with Pakistan Telecommunication Co Ltd (PTCL) to provide Irdeto’s content security technology for IPTV, combined with
Huawei’s middleware, videoon-demand server and set top boxes. The agreement enables PTCL to launch IPTV services across Pakistan in the first half of 2007.


As in Pakistan, IPTV is gradually emerging in newer markets. India, too, witnessed its first IPTV service from state-run telco MTNL late last year. Aksh Optifibre Ltd is managing the software, hardware and content delivery for IPTV service.


Mumbai-based Sujata Dev, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Time Broadband Services Pvt. Ltd. (TBSPL) said MTNL’s current IPTV service launched is a limited version based on trial runs with restricted channel numbers. But she added, “BSNL (state-run telco) and MTNL enjoy 95% market share in landline connectivity estimated at 48 million subscribers. Their focus to improve the infrastructure will provide a boost to IPTV. The home viewing market is growing significantly as well.”


UTStarcom, which is involved in MTNL’s commercial IPTV deployment, said China presents an “extraordinary opportunity” as the current television offering is limited and video on demand services are relatively non-existent. UTStarcom has built strong relationships with both China Telecom and China Netcom to deploy next generation IP networks in support of approximately 53 million PAS/iPAS subscribers in China.


“Both operators offer IPTV services that consist of live broadcast television packages upwards of 100 different channels, thousands of hours of video on demand and time-shift capabilities which allow the end user to access any programme broadcast in the past two weeks. UTStarcom is currently engaged in more than 20 commercial deployments between China Telecom and China Netcom, the most significant of which from a subscriber perspective are in Shanghai (China Telecom) and Harbin (China Netcom),” said UTStarcom’s spokesperson.


Elsewhere, Malaysia’s MOL AccessPortal Berhad and M2B World Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd. recently formed a strategic partnership to distribute and market M2B Asia’s M2Btv Global Broadband TV Service in Malaysia, targeting 50,000 subscribers over three years. The service in Malaysia is scheduled to launch in March.


M2B Asia had launched Singapore’s first broadband TV service in July 2006. The market in Singapore is getting competitive as Reeltime Media Ltd and OBSTV Asia joined existing players last year. M2B offers over 60 channels of on-demand programming to Singapore subscribers.


“Through the M2Btv Pony box subscribers can also enjoy face-to-face video chatting and messages, on-demand shopping including travel-related videos and booking, and more recently interactive games and karaoke on-demand. In short, our M2Btv, Singapore first broadband TV, service is not only featurepacked, the value proposition is all the better in delivering an on-demand lifestyle for subscribers,” said Liew Kim Siong, Vice-President, Corporate Communications, M2B World Pte Ltd.


“Many of our early subscribers are young families and they immediately appreciate the flexibility and wider range of content that is available with M2Btv. Moreover, the customised programming on 15 local channels of “Premium Singapore” and “Platinum Singapore” have been very popular with our Singapore subscribers,” he added.


On the latest move, Kim Siong said Malaysian subcribers can immediately plug in and play the on-demand content offered by M2Btv. The company is also customising local programmes like Malay movies, dramas, variety and even Asian football matches specially catering to the local needs.


Among other new launches, Anytime, which delivers video on-demand channel to consumers over IPTV, broadband and digital cable networks, is set to introduce its on-Demand entertainment portal starting with Australia. This will be followed by launches in Singapore, Korea and Taiwan in the next four-five months, according to President and Chief Executive Officer Craig Zimbulis.


The service, enhanced by the Intel Viiv technology digital entertainment platform by bringing the capabilities of consumer electronics devices and PCs together, will allow consumers easy access and viewing of Internet-delivered programming from an Intel Viiv technology-based PC on their TV set. The broadband TV service will be localized in terms of languages, content line-up and differential pricing. Zimbulis declined to reveal targets or to quantify the services’ potential in each market.


Anytime chose markets based on high penetration rates of broadband-ready PCs in homes and to meet the rapidly expanding needs of consumers in Asia for rich media content using the internet.


From a content aggregator perspective, Alita Wong, Vice President - New Media of Hong Kong-based Broadband Network Systems Ltd (BNS) said, “Generally, a successful content evolution path may look like this: For service launch, a free content offering including foreign news and some local channels seems to be a good way to build subscriber numbers. The second stage is to add other genres once numbers expand, such as kids and lifestyle. Once economies of scale are reached, premium programming such as sports and movie channels will cement the service’s success.”


However, she added that content preferences and the IPTV service evolution differs from country to country, especially in relation to the strength of pay TV viewership. “The choice for IPTV operators is either to mimic existing cable TV lineups or become a niche channel provider and complement cable TV offerings,” said Wong, whose company is associated with True IPTV in Thailand and National Data Japan and United Power for their STB-based VOD service portal Joy channel at Rakuichi.net.


Observing the trends in relatively mature markets, Tandberg’s Delaney said the mass deployment of VoD has already begun in Asia with Hong Kong IPTV operator PCCW rollingout an on-demand service – a move that has contributed to PCCW significantly closing the subscriber gap on the region’s incumbent cable TV operator, i-Cable.


He added that Shanghai Daning’s SiTV service has allowed the operator to deliver over 10,000 hours of movies, TV programmes, English-language education classes and special events on-demand to viewers across Shanghai.


Overall, on the challenges, Delaney said in the DSL market, there is a careful balance to be achieved between bandwidth management and quality of service. Advanced encoding platforms, such as MPEG-4 AVC and VC-1, are reducing the bandwidth required for quality content delivery by up to 50%, enabling multi-channel SD and even two HD channels to be delivered to the home. Multiroom and home networking will increasingly become important.


“Typically, IPTV deployments are starting to provide much more interactive and graphically appealing user interfaces. VOD, picture-in-picture, EPG grids etc. are some examples of this,” said Delaney. “Set-top boxes are becoming increasingly affordable due to economies of scale. Sourcing content is becoming easier following the digital cataloguing and indexing of material.”

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