The Indian government will eventually face a situation wherein its policy of needing permission for offering IPTV in the country will be made redundant by increases in bandwidth, which already allows consumers to use devices and applications to watch TV online; so why not go the distance and throw all conditions and regulations related to IPTV out the window? What's the point of this over-regulation that tries to control one form of delivery of content over Internet Protocol, while others fall outside the purview? We're in a strange situation: Telecom companies with Unified Access Service Licensees, Cellular Mobile Telephone Service Licensees, Basic Service Licensees, Cable Operators and ISPs with net worth of more than Rs. 100 crores and "having permission from the licensor to provide IPTV", are permitted to provide IPTV services; none of the IPTV service providers have been successful in India; at the same time, in its recommendations on Telecom Infrastructure Policy in India (pdf), the telecom regulator TRAI has only one short sighted recommendation to offer on IPTV to the Indian government - The Authority recommends that the present condition of minimum net worth of Rs. 100 crore for an ISP to provide IPTV services should be done away with. In our opinion, the regulator and the government need a reality check - the company with maximum subscribers to TV content over Internet Protocol in India is not Aksh Optifibre, MyWay or IOL Netcom (do they still offer IPTV services?) working with mobile or wireline operators, but…
