Just when you thought IPTV was dead, here's a doozie: Indiantelevision.com reports that Sahara India is planning to roll out IPTV services. The report is remarkably short on details, and frankly, we find it hard to believe that anybody would even consider launching IPTV services in India. Maybe this expression of interest is on the basis of a recent TRAI recommendation for allowing 100% FDI In DTH, HITS, IPTV, Mobile TV, Cable Networks, which, incidentally, is yet to be accepted by the government. As of today, very few IPTV services exist: Bharti Airtel has an IPTV service that it never talks about - apart from we-provide-IPTV kind of statements in its quarterly report - and the last time we spoke with them about it (in April 2009), they were looking at it more as a premium service for a select set of customers, and shifting focus to DTH. Reliance Communications launched IPTV pilots, but that never moved beyond the pilot stage. We haven't heard of Aksh Optifibre's IPTV service for MTNL for a while now, Time Broadband has shut down, and IOL Netcom, a BSE listed company that ran a pilot service for MTNL, barely appears to be functioning. As per an RTI we'd filed a couple of years ago, MTNL Delhi had 5910 IPTV connections, paying Rs 298.69 per paid connection. IPTV was supposed to be the savior of wireline broadband: telecom operators were looking to use IPTV to increase broadband penetration, and cross-sell both broadband and TV services. The problems?…
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