Smart Digivision Launches IPTV Services In Haryana with BSNL; 54 Cities By End 2009

BSNL has launched IPTV services in Haryana with Smart Digivision, an HFCL company, starting with 3 cities - Gurgaon, Faridabad and Ambala. The company plans to launch the service in up to 93 cities, and is viewing this as a means to retain its wireline customers. Smart Digivision is yet another IPTV company to set itself a bloated target - of 4 million IPTV subscribers in 3 years, and to this end, they will launch IPTV in 54 cities for which they have franchise agreements, according to a release.

Smart Digivision also provides IPTV services to HFCL Infotel customers. As of November 2008, HFCL had a very small wireline user base of 155,155 users, as compared to BSNL which had a total user base of 29,703,496 subscribers, of which 848,328 wireline customers are from Haryana.

The other key player in the IPTV space is Aksh Optifibre: there’s very little available on what IOL Netcom had done in the past year, and Time Broadband appears to be focusing more on the international market - particularly China. At the India Telecom 2008 conference last month, I was told that most IPTV service providers did pilots with BSNL and MTNL, and some of them have not launched commercial services since; we’re yet to confirm officially this, though.

P.s.: we couldnt locate the Smart Digivision website, so in case you know - do tell. An old PDF on the HFCL subsidiary here.

Alcatel Lucent Files Contextual Advertising Patent For TV Over IPTV

This should be particular interest to Media companies - Telecom major Alcatel-Lucent has filed for a patent in India, for contextual advertising on IPTV networks. Since advertising will be delivered to the screen over the broadband network, it gives them the opportunity of contextualizing ads based on location, personal TV viewing habits etc. The ads will probably be stored on the Personal Video Recorder (PVR) or Set Top Box (STB), and delivered during specific TV spots, based on selection.

Examples of what their service can do
– Delivery of context specific ads on television channels during the “ad insert period”, based on selection of a bunch of advertisements.
– Location based advertising, for specific Distribution Areas, also based on demographic information and/or proximity to advertiser.

The idea is to provide better targeting on Television - provide ads to consumers closer to the advertisers place of business, as well as target neighbourhoods where the psychographics favour the advertisers services - thus allowing an advertiser wants to advertise to and only pay for advertising that reaches subscribers who are likely potential customers.

Challenges: Television spots normally range from 15 seconds to 90 seconds, with 30 seconds being the usual length. One challenge for the service will be to maintain a standard length of an ad break (say 3-5 minutes), and yet ensure that the dynamically placed ads all total up to the same length of the ad break. The bigger challenge, however, is selling the concept to media planners and channels. 

Company: Alcatel Lucent 
Patent Number (International): PCT/US2006/062081
Filing Date (India): 17th June 2008 (Details)
Download: PDF

IPTV Co IOL Netcom Turns A Profit; Looks To Raise Funds Through QIB Placement

To say that it’s been a good quarter for IOL Netcom would be an understatement - the IPTV company which is also in the WiMax and Voice over IP businesses, for the first time in many-a-quarter turned a profit. IOL Netcom has reported a net profit of Rs. 73.11 lakhs, coupled with a substantial jump in revenues - at Rs. 14.19 crores, up from Rs. 3.04 crores last quarter. Remember that they had reported a net loss of Rs. 9.68 crores last quarter. The reason for this substantial jump in revenues is not known, but going through IOL Netcom’s annual report, I did notice that they were owed Rs. 5.18 crores last fiscal. We’ve contacted IOL Netcom for more colour on this substantial increase in revenues. Remember that Lehman Brothers owns around 1.46% in the company, while Videocon has picked up around 14% in the company - 12.26% through Shree Dhoot Trading & Agencies Ltd. and 1.83% through Videocon Realty and Infrastructure Ltd. QIB Placement (more…)

IPTV Roundup: Aksh - Sony Pictures Content; Colors - The New Media Group; BSNL

Aksh Optifibre Gets Sony Pictures Content For VoD
Aksh Optifibre, one of the IPTV franchisees for India (alongwith Smart Broadband, Time Broadband and IOL Netcom) has signed a 3 year deal with Sony Pictures Entertainment for Hollywood movies for their Aksh’s video on demand platform iControl. Aksh powers BSNL services in 20 cities across north India, and IPTV in Delhi and Mumbai. The problem that we’ve identified is, that the other IPTV service providers are also operational in the broadly the same zones. [via TelevisionPoint]

Colors On IPTV In Japan, Korea, Taiwan And Australia
This landmark carriage agreement represents the first ever global launch of a major entertainment channel on IPTV as customers across the globe shall be able to preview COLORS for 1 week at no cost, courtesy Viacom 18 and World On-Demand. The channel will be free for a week, and will be distributed across TNMGs network in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Australia. TNMG had launched UTV channels in the same markets a couple of months ago. [via release]

BSNL IPTV Rollout
BSNL continues with announcing rollouts in separate cities - in Lucknow on October 15, Nagpur by November, and Nashik by Diwali. The service has recently been launched in Pune. Why can’t they prepare the infra in each city for a launch, and do a national rollout, instead of launches city-by-city?

MyTime To Get Two IPTV Specific Channels - ISKON & IGNOU

TIME Broadband will be launching two on-demand IPTV specific channels - one devotional channel from the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKON), and an educational channel from the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), reports Mint. Consumers will have to pay over and above the monthly subscription charges that they pay for IPTV.

But really, what’s the point? Is this what India wants “On Demand”? The first thing a user would probably ask, when choosing between DTH and IPTV, is whether the regular bouquet of channels is available or not. So does My Time have channels like STAR Plus, Aaj Tak, STAR World, Zee TV, SET, ESPN, STAR Sports, Times Now, CNN-IBN, CNBC-TV18 and others. Take a look around Time Broadband’s websites - both this and this - and you really can’t tell. And Time Broadbandband is targeting 1 million subscribers in 1 year. Am rather surprised that Mint didn’t ask about how they intend to achieve this magical number.

Really makes me wonder what IPTV service providers are upto. TIME Broadband, IOL Netcom and Smart Broadband have all made announcements over the past year, but we really haven’t seen anything, in terms of numbers, from them. The only numbers we have, are from BSE listed IOL Netcom, which reported a net loss of Rs. 9.68 crores last quarter, with revenues of Rs. 3.04 crores.

Related:
– India’s IPTV Guidelines: VAS, New Channels Require Govt Approval
– IPTV Finally Gets The Govt Nod In India; The Journey So Far
– Smart Broadband To Launch IPTV Services With HFCL And MTNL; An HFCL Group Company?

India’s IPTV Guidelines: VAS, New Channels Require Govt Approval

The Indian Government finally issued guidelines for IPTV services in India yesterday, and there are a few surprises:

– Differential IPTV License Fees: Telecom service providers will have to pay a heavier license fee than ISPs. Telcos will have to pay according to the circle of operation - 10% of Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) for Category A circles, 8% for category B and 6% for Category C. Comparatively, ISPs will have to pay only 6% of AGR. The government has blocked a possible loophole for Telcos - if a teleco registers as a cable operator to provide IPTV, it will be considered a telecom operator. There’s no mention of a license fee for Cable Operators, only that Cable Operators will be governed by provisions of Cable TV Networks (Regulation) Act and TRAI Act for content.

– Value Added Services: IPTV Service Provider shall furnish the complete details such as name, technical details and license etc of the value added service being provided through IPTV network. Provided that in case of any new value added service is added to the network, the IPTV service provider shall obtain prior approval of the Government or licensing authority.

– The guidelines allow licensees to take content from Multi System Operators (MSOs) and Cable Operators, instead of going to specific channels or IPTV service providers.
– Only broadcast satellite TV channels registered/permitted by the Ministry of I&B shall be transmitted, in the same (unaltered) form. Only those News & Current Affairs TV channels which have been registered by Ministry of I&B will be transmitted

Our Take

– IPTV is “triple play” - voice, data and video. The guidelines are focused on content, look at IPTV as primarily a broadcast technology, and appear to consider everything else (including data and voice) as mere “Value Added Services”. Requiring approval for Data and Voice services on IPTV is a retrograde step - do mobile operators/ data service providers require government approval for Mobile Data Services?
– If IPTV service providers take content from MSOs and Cable Operators, won’t that be considered re-selling?
– The notion that IPTV will be differentiated from Digital Cable and DTH by very niche, international channels - for example, a Gaming or Golf Channel - is out the window, since only those satellite channels which have received government approval will be allowed. This procedure is a barrier to entry of international channels, and will delay deployment.

The rest of the guidelines (more…)

IPTV Finally Gets The Govt Nod In India; The Journey So Far

Finally, finally, finally.

The Indian government, specifically - the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting - has issued guidelines for IPTV services in India. With this, private telecom operators like Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications, as well as Internet Service Providers and Cable Operators can offer the service can offer the service. The guidelines are expected to be made available today, but here’s what we have so far:

Who can provide IPTV Services
If they already have the the license or permission from the DoT,
– Telecom operators which have a UASL license
– ISPs with a net worth of over Rs. 100 crores, which have permission to provide IPTV services can go ahead without any further registration.
– Cable TV Operators registered under the Cable Television Network (Regulation) Act, 1995

Cable Operators and Telcos need to give a declaration to the I&B Ministry, Department of Telecom and TRAI, with details of date of commencement of the service, the area being covered and details of network infrastructure.

We’ll have more inputs on this, when the guidelines are uploaded on the MIB site…but looks unlikely, given that the MIB has tagged  documents from 2007 as NEW.

Some thoughts on the journey so far, for IPTV in India

Despite the go-ahead, it’s going to be a long, hard struggle for IPTV in India. Which also explains why telecom operators like Airtel and Reliance Communications are hedging their bets by investing in both DTH and IPTV.

Franchise Operations: Too Many Cooks?
Take a look at the MTNL Mumbai site for IPTV. MTNL is offering IPTV services powered by both Aksh Optifibre and IOL Netcom. So you have different tariff plans for both, different selection of channels. As a consumer, I’ll have to choose between multiple service providers - Aksh, IOL Netcom, Time Broadband and now, Smart Broadband. Why not have a ubiquitous offering?

Circles Of Disconnect
BSNL and MTNL appear to be operating in the same manner in which their telecom operations have been - different circles operate independently, and IPTV service providers have to deal with, for example, the Mumbai and Delhi circles for MTNL operate independently, and have tied up with different franchisees. A centralized system would allow IPTV service providers a single point of contact, and ubiquitous communication to consumers. At present, you keep hearing about BSNL launching IPTV in some part of Rajasthan, a delay in Kolkata…

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