Freeband TV News

Numbers not yet phenomenal, but IPTV is on the up

Written by Chris Andrews

Bringing standards in line will help to further boost deployments

The number of markets with notable IPTV deployments has quadrupled in the last five years, and by the end of the second quarter of 2009 there were some 26.3 million IPTV subscribers worldwide, according to new figures from Point Topic.

While 26 million globally isn’t a huge figure, the growth story is pretty impressive. In the same quarter of last year there were around 17.1 million subscribers, so that’s an annual increase of 53 percent which is difficult to ignore.

“Growth in many of the early adopter countries, the US, France, Hong Kong for example has been steady rather than spectacular, the real action is starting to take place elsewhere,” said John Bosnell, senior analyst at Point Topic.

South America, Eastern and more of Western Europe are coming on stream, said Point Topic, and as regulation in some of the more mature markets starts to catch up with the technology, new impetus has been seen in subscriber growth.

“In themselves these numbers are pretty impressive, but market growth has not been as rapid as some IPTV evangelists might have hoped for,” said Bosnell.

The Multimedia Research Group has also published some figures, predicting a compound annual growth rate in IPTV subscribers of 31%, growing from 28 million this year, to 83 million in 2013. The Group said that the 2009 subscriber total exceeded its forecast from earlier this year by two million.

The European region will continue to lead in IPTV deployments in 2013 with 48 per cent share, said MRG, followed by Asia and North America.

"Now that the economy seems to be improving, and service providers are still reporting solid growth, this fall edition [of its IPTV report] has adjusted the forecast accordingly," said Jose Alvear, MRG IPTV Analyst. "This was done in response to the better-than-expected growth exhibited by the major service providers around the world in 2009."

MRG has projected total service revenue for 2013 at $38 billion, which it said was also up sharply from its last forecast. "Consumers are beginning to understand the advantages of IPTV," said Gary Schultz, MRG president. "Simultaneously, IPTV operators are facing more competition, driving rapid investment in both infrastructure and new services."

ABI has also released research into the pay-TV market, finding that global pay-TV subscribers will number more than 730 million by the end of 2011. Telco TV, it said, is continuing to grow, though ABI’s figures are more conservative than MRG’s in this respect.

“Telco TV subscribers will number 47 million by the end of 2011, with a CAGR of 22.5 per cent over the next five years,” said industry analyst Serene Fong.

“The improvement of broadband access is one factor which helps to increase Telco TV subscriptions,” said research associate Khin Sandi Lynn. “Other types of pay-TV platforms, satellite, cable and terrestrial are also found to be increasing, although at a slower rate.”

Meanwhile, the Open IPTV Forum has announced that it has signed liaison agreements with the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA), the Digital Video Broadcasting Project (DVB) and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to further drive for an ‘interoperable end-to-end IPTV solution for Managed Network and Open Internet deployments in a global market’.

“These liaison agreements underline the Forum's commitment to use existing and emerging technologies and specifications from standardisation bodies and other industry associations,” the Forum said. “DLNA, DVB and ETSI specifications are the base for major parts of the Open IPTV Forum Release 1 specifications and the setup of these working relationships will foster the cooperation with these organisations, ensure proper reuse of specifications and further drive the alignment of the various IPTV specifications which is an important target for mass market IPTV deployments.”

And Project Canvas, which of course is aiming to create an open platform for internet-connected TV devices, has announced that Channel 4 and ISP Talk Talk have signed up to the project. Canvas is continuing to seek ‘expressions of interest from other companies, who share a similar vision for internet-connected TV, to become partners in the joint venture that will promote and run the platform’.

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