pwc advises care on implementation

E u r o p e a n D e p l o y m e n t R e p o r t

Communications and media com-panies implementing IPTV willneed to manage their approach

carefully in order to deliver a profit,according to Pricewaterhouse Coopers(PwC). In particular, they need toensure that their strategy and deliveryoffers an adequate return on invest-ment that is in line with their serviceroll-out and minimises the market entryrisks.

Colin Light, TMT director at PwC (right),

believes that companies will need to learn from

mistakes of the past. “If companies invest heavi-

ly in network capacity for IPTV they could strug-

gle to make a return on this investment due to

the lead time in reaching all of their potential

subscribers through ongoing broadband roll-out, especially in light

of intense competition in the provision of triple and quad play,” he

advised. “Differentiation from traditional broadcast TV will be key for

the IPTV service provider. But the real contribution to the company’s

overall portfolio and profits needs to come by attracting the mass

market.”

PwC suggests that with competition from a wide range of players,

the success of IPTV for a company may lie in a greater orientation of

the business towards the consumer, rather than the historic technol-

ogy-led decisions that have tended to drive

most telecoms operators in the past.

David Lancefield, TMT partner, PwC,

added: “IPTV is the hotbed for true conver-

gence - showing the money from IPTV will

require telcos to transform, both culturally and

as an organisation, into areas that until now

were occupied by media companies. Content

acquisition and advertising sales will need to

become core competencies for every telco

launching IPTV.”

According to Light, the overriding shift that

these companies need to make is now all about

customer service, consumer

experience and developing trust in the brand,

since one second of blank screen maybe

enough to turn the customer off the service for

good. “To capture market share, traditional technology-led strategies

must be relegated in favour of market-led approaches. Engaging

with consumers in a single, holistic way is paramount - the right con-

tent for the right person, in the right place, at the right time.”

In respect of content acquisition, Light cautioned that in the IPTV

world, big is not always better, and that premium rights purchases

(such as expensive football rights) may not be sufficient to secure

the mass market subscriber base as the operator rolls out services

across the country.

Q1 2008

PwC advises care on implementation

cmiptv_supplement.qxp 18/1/08 10:17

Microsoft and UK telco BT are bringing together thenext-generation TV service BT Vision with Microsoft’sXbox 360 games and entertainment system. All BTbroadband customers will have the opportunity toreceive high-definition gaming, television and moviesthrough an Xbox 360 console.

BT Vision, which is powered by the Microsoft Mediaroom IPTV

platform, plans to make the device and service offering available

to customers in the middle of 2008. The partnership will enable any

BT Broadband customer to use an Xbox 360 console to access the

BT Vision service and its extensive library of on-demand content,

giving instant access to hundreds of movies and thousands of

hours of sporting events, television programming, music videos

and other digital content, such as BT Vision Sport’s 242 ‘near-live’

FA Premier League football matches. BT Vision customers with an

Xbox 360 console will gain the option of accessing BT Vision from

either the Xbox 360 console or a set-top-box. The service will be

available to existing and future Xbox 360 console owners.

Dan Marks, CEO of BT Vision, said the aim was to provide BT

Vision on multiple platforms, giving customers greater convenience,

control and flexibility over what they watch, when they watch and

how they watch TV. “It also means that we are able to potentially

expand our BT Vision customer base by tapping into the popularity

of Xbox 360.”

advanced-television.com 3

Analysis firm MRG’s latest IPTV Forecastfinds that Europe still leads the worldmarket, while Asia and other emergingmarkets such as China, Eastern Europe,Korea and Russia are taking larger stepsto growth. North America sees steadygrowth by independents, and acceleratedgrowth by the large Telcos.

Growth for IPTV subs are projected to grow

from 13.5m in 2007 to 72.6m in 2011, roughly a

40% compounded annual growth rate. With an

emphasis on profitability, improved operations and

sustained growth, large European carriers are

planning for future converged services still over 18

months away.

Len Feldman, director of IPTV Analysis for MRG

(above right), says the company has substantially increased its

global subscriber forecast for 2011, from 63.6m in the April 2007

Forecast to 72.6m now, “in large part because we’re considerably

more optimistic about the probability for market success in China,

India and Korea. We slightly decreased our

subscriber forecast for 2007, from 14.3 million to

13.5 million, but paradoxically, our forecast for total

system revenues went up, from $2.1 billion to $2.5

billion.”

He added that Europe would remain the

number one IPTV market in terms of subscriber

count through 2011, but Asia is catching up

quickly and will most likely surpass Europe in

2012-2013. “In North America, Verizon and AT&T

are growing considerably faster than we previously

forecast, and we expect Verizon to be the world’s

largest IPTV service provider in 2011.”

In terms of technology, MRG notes that MPEG-

4/AVC is consistently replacing MPEG-2 in new

installation, as MPEG-2 ceases to be sold even in

cost-sensitive markets such as China or Eastern Europe. Although

DSL continues as the dominant last-mile technology, FTTH (Fibre-to-

the-Home) is beginning to show more traction in both new and

established neighbourhoods.

MICROSOFT AND BT GET XBOX 360 VISION

More strength in market

MONITOR

cmiptv_supplement.qxp 18/1/08 10:17 Page 3

The BBC is supporting the full launch of the BBCiPlayer – which became widely available on ChristmasDay 2007 - with a multi-media campaign. BBC iPlayerlaunched to the pubic inbeta on 27 July 2007. Sincethen streaming has beenincorporated, giving viewersthe opportunity to watch aprogramme straight away,as well as the downloadingfunction which allows PCusers to keep programmeson their computer for 30 days.

Future phases of BBC iPlayer

will include the full integration of

BBC Radio Player, as well as mak-

ing BBC iPlayer available on TV

platforms, starting with Virgin

Media, mobile phones and other

hand held devices.

Kerry Moss, head of marketing,

BBC iPlayer, said the campaign aimed to bring BBC iPlayer to a

mass, mainstream audience. “We recognise that, for a large part of

our audience, the net is not currently somewhere they’re used to

going to watch or download TV programmes and so we have

developed a campaign that highlights the ultimate benefit of BBC

iPlayer – that the audience no longer has to miss out on their

favourite BBC programmes.”

Anthony Rose, the BBC’s head

of digital media technology, said

the Corporation had worked hard to

make BBC iPlayer a compelling

user proposition. “Streaming is the

first in a number of new services

that we will be rolling out in the

coming months and we will be

listening to feedback from our

audiences to understand how they

find the service and what new

additions they would be interested

in. We will be constantly updating

BBC iPlayer to ensure that we

continuously improve the way we

deliver BBC programmes.”

“One of the many updates we

hope to implement in 2008 is a

download solution for users of other operating systems including

Macs which may be possible with the next suite of Adobe Air

products,” he added.

SecureProtect your TV service and digital content with VideoGuard® CA and DRM, the industry’smost trusted solution. NDS VideoGuard® simplifies convergence with secure businessscenarios for TVs, PCs, Portable Media Players, mobile phones, and removable memory.NDS Secure solutions protect more content, anytime, anywhere, to the devices you choose.

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Trust our experience

BBC iPlayer celebrates Christmas launchMONITOR


China’s IPTV mar-ket last year isfell short ofexpectations,both in terms ofsubscriber growthand equipment shipments,according toiSuppli.Subscribers onthe mainlandwere expected tototal only 846,000at the end of2007, comparedto Chinese IPTVoperators’ expectations of 1.3m. The overall pace andscale of IPTV deployments have been disappointing thisyear.

Four operators now have IPTV licences in China: Shanghai Media

Group (SMG), China Central Television International (CCTV), Nanfang

Broadcast Media (NBM), and China Radio International (CRI). SMG

was China’s IPTV pioneer and remains the only operator actively pur-

suing deployments.

As the first IPTV licensee, SMG partnered with China Telecom

(CTC) and China Netcom (CNC) to introduce services in Shanghai

and Harbin respectively in

2006. The final outcome of

these deployments has

been widely regarded as a

key barometer of the

industry’s prospects.

SMG had planned to

expand IPTV to multiple

cities in 2007. The State

Administration of Radio,

Film, and Television

(SARFT) approved SMG’s

launch of IPTV services in

10 cities: Fuzhou and

Quanzhou in Fujian

Province, Taizhou in

Zhejiang Province, Xian in

Shannxi Province, Hanzhong in Hubei Province, Shenyang, Dalian

and Panjing in Liaoning Province and Mudanjiang and Heihe in

Heilongjiang Province. However, local operators experienced

difficulties promoting IPTV services. Fujian and Zhejiang Provinces

enrolled about 100,000 and 30,000 subscribers respectively, but the

other locations did not come close to meeting their targets.

Meanwhile, the other three IPTV licensees chose to pursue a

cautious wait-and-see strategy. CCTV has announced plans for IPTV

field tests in Baotou in Inner Mongolia, in Changchun in Jilin Province,

and in Nanjing in Jiangsu Province.

Subscriber (K) Operators SuppliersCommercialHeilongjiang 170 SMG/CNC UTShanghai 200 CTC/SMG UT/ZTEHenan 250 CNC VCOMJiangsu 15 CTC/CCTV ZTEZhejiang 35 CTC/SMG UTFujian 110 CTC/SMG UTGuangdong 15 CTC/SMG Huawei/ZTE/UTShannxi 3 CTC/SMG UT/ZTEHubei 20 CTC/SMG ZTELiaoning 10 CNC/SMG HuaweiJilin 10 CNC/CCTV HuaweiAnhui 5 CTC Huawei/UT/ZTEInner Mongolia 3 CNC/CCTV ALU/ZTE/UT/HuaweiTotal 846

Source: iSuppli Corp. December 2007

Table : China IPTV Subscriber Forecast in 2007 by Region (1000s of Subscribers)

China’s IPTV industry looks beyond 2007

Ericsson has acquired Spanish TVconsultancy and systems integra-tion specialist HyC Group, a movedesigned to strengthen its positionin the services and multimediadomains and as a systems integra-tor of IPTV solutions. The acquisi-

tion follows Ericsson’s purchase ofadvanced video compression tech-nologies company TandbergTelevision at the beginning of2007.

Hans Vestberg, EVP, CFO andhead of global services at Ericsson

(left), confirmed that multimediaand services, including IPTV andsystems integration, were twostrategic areas for Ericsson, andthat HyC’s skills and experiencewere a perfect fit with its serviceofferings.

Ericsson acquires HyC Group

The telco TV market is quickly adding new deploy-ments and subscribers, which is boosting headendequipment sales as each deployment requires at leastone headend, reports research firm In-Stat. Growth inthe ranks of subscribers means more revenue fromlicence, service, and support fees for vendors of mid-dleware, content protection, and on-demand plat-forms, the high-tech market, according to In-Stat’sstudy - Telco TV Headends Moving to the UpgradePhase.

“As more headends are built, the market for broadcast TV

content-processing equipment will turn from newly built headends

to headend upgrades,” says Michelle Abraham, In-Stat analyst.

“Many of these upgrades will be the addition or replacement of

encoding equipment as more channels are added and encoding

technology improves. The launch of new HD channels will be a

driving factor for additional encoding equipment.”

In-Stat findings suggest that the worldwide telco TV headend

market will reach $732m in 2011; broadcast content processing

equipment revenue will stagnate, while middleware, content

protection, and on-demand content will continue to rise; a video-

on-demand (VOD) service has become a requirement for many

telcos when they deploy telco TV, which has improved the market

for on-demand equipment vendors.

Telco TV boom benefits headend vendors

6 advanced-television.com

MONITOR



BENELUX

Robert Briel reports on differing experiences from operators in Belgium, Luxembourg and The Netherlands

BELGIUM

Belgacom launched its IPTV service

in the summer of 2005. It offers over

80 channels (depending on the

region) duplicating for the most part

the services available on cable. As

a marketing tool it has acquired the exclusive live coverage rights to

the Belgian premier football league (Jupiler) for three seasons (up

until the spring of 2008).

After a slow start, Belgacom TV now seems to have got into its

stride, posting 249,434 subscribers at the end of end of September

2007. It gained 109,769 new subs during the first nine months of

2007, so a current total of around 280,000 to 290,000 seems likely.

Belgacom TV is the only digital operator that is available

nationally, with the bouquets only differing slightly in the two regions

as well as in Brussels, with more Dutch language channels available

in Flanders and more French language stations in the Walloon part

of the country.

Belgian football, which is supplemented by various international

leagues, is exclusively available on the platform as a premium pay

service, as well as on the showcase channel Kanaal 11. The

company has chosen the Siemens Surpass Home Entertainment

platform and offers the option of installing two set-top boxes in the

home in areas served by its VDSL network.

THE NETHERLANDS

Being one of the most densely cabled countries in Europe, it was

quite a challenge when fledgling Dutch telecom operator Versatel

decided to launch the country’s first IPTV service. The move into full

triple play was announced in late 2004, when the company acquired

Europe setfor global

marketlead

With seasoned analysts and researchers

suggesting that Europe leads the world in IPTV

deployments, and looks set to maintain that

position through to 2011, IPTV Internationallooks at recent developments and future

prospects that place the continent in the

vanguard of the industry. We asked our

correspondents to bring you a concise, but

comprehensive guide to operators’ backgrounds,

their plans, prices and packages.

BELGACOM TV Classic + - basic bouquet of up to 60 channels (depend-ing on area) at €9.95 a month, Select NL (Dutch) - additional thematicchannels with kids, music, culture and movies; 12 channels at €14.95a month.Movies + Sport NL (Dutch) - movie channels, sports channels and adultentertainment at €14.95 a month. 8 channels.Select F (French) - additional thematic channels with kids, music, cul-ture and movies; 17 channels at €14.95 a month.Movies + Sport F (French) - French language channels, 6 for €14.95 amonth.Jupiler league (last season) - €9.95 for the remaining season. On demand: €5.95 monthly subscription for RTL (French) and VRT(Dutch); VRT, VTM programmes available at 0.50 - €2.00; movies€2.00 - €5.50€1.95 a month for Comfort View for PVR functions; two STBs available,SD receiver with 80 GB hard drive and HD-ready with 160 GB hard disk.249,434 subscribers (as per Sept. 30, 2007)

Operator and Service Details

EURO DEPLOYMENT

cm1701euro iptv.qxd 18/1/08 09:58 Page 2


the exclusive television rights to live

coverage of the premier Dutch

football league Eredivisie.

Although the acquisition of the

rights was seen as a ticket to

hundreds of thousands of sub-

scribers to the new triple play offer,

it did not work out that way. When the service launched at the start

of the 2005/06 season in August 2005, new subscribers were

secured, but in very limited numbers. Projections of 100,000 by the

end 2005 were far off the mark, with the actual total being 53,000.

The 100,000 mark was eventually reached in September 2006, and

in the same year the service was renamed Tele2TV when Versatel

merged with Tele2.

Tele2TV uses Samsung IPTV infrastructure in the play out and

network and Samsung set-top boxes in the home. After the initial

announcement of their agreement, the two companies started to

build the network from scratch. Quite a formidable task, it passed off

with relatively few hitches given the complexity of the technology.

In early 2006, the incumbent KPN announced its plans for IPTV.

The service “would not be regular television, but a new generation of

television” according to the company’s chairman and CEO Aad

Scheepbouwer. Viewers would be able to personalise their offer,

have more control with a built-in DVR and would be offered lots of

on-demand content. Hence the name ‘Mine’, which means ‘my TV’.

The service was also to be positioned as a high-end product

rather than a budget one. Things didn’t work out in practice. KPN

experienced a lot of technical trouble when rolling out the service,

which coincided with the simultaneous introduction of VoIP

telephony on its network. Because of these problems, a full-scale roll

out was postponed time and time again and at the moment the

service is believed to have no more than 10,000 actual subscribers.

In order to boost subscription numbers, KPN also slashed its

price to a €9.95 monthly fee and threw in free subscriptions to its

DTT service Digitenne as well. In the process, the service was also

renamed KPN Interactieve TV to more clearly define the product.

Plans to invest in new channels and content have also been

shelved.

KPN chose the Siemens Surpass Home Entertainment system

and Kreatel set-top boxes.

LUXEMBOURG

P&TLuxembourg is the incumbent

postal and telecommunication

services operator in Luxembourg.

The company has been planning an

IPTV service for some time now and

launched a pilot last October in the municipalities of Limpertsberg-

Luxembourg and Mersch. A full service is planned for roll out during

2008, to be run by the ‘Enterprise des P&TLuxembourg’ (EPT). The

operator has signed an agreement with Verimatrix to deploy their

Video Content Authority System (VCAS).

The new IPTV service will offer three different packages. The starter

package proposes up to 80 channels, including German, French,

Luxembourgish, English, Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish TV. A

second package will add thematic channels such as kids and sports

channels. The third package will include video on demand, with up

to a 1,000 movies. There will be a set-top box with a PVR. No details

about exact pricing of the services and set-top boxes have been

announced. For the time being, the service is known as ‘La

Télévision des P&T’.

TELE 2 VISION - Tele2 Videobox - no monthly charge, but only on-demand movies and football a la carte availableTele2 Vision Silver - €7.95 a month; basic tier of 16 TV channels and23 radio stationsTele 2 Vision Gold - €14.95 a month; extended tier of 41 TV channelsand 36 radio stations; more thematic channels, foreign stations as wellas all Dutch regional public stationsFilm1 and Sport1 a la carte available to all subscribers for €22.95 amonth. Approximately 201,000 subscribers (as per Sept. 30, 2007)

KPN INTERACTIEVE TV - Basic package offers 50 channels plus 75radio stations at €9.95 a monthPlanet Plus bouquet - additional channels for €9.95 extra with sportschannels, music, documentaries, adult entertainment,Tele2 Eredivisie - €9.95 a month for live footbalFilmDirect - 350 movies on-demand from €2.99 per titleOn-demand Catch-up TV available from SBS and public broadcastersApproximately 10,000 subscribers


LA TÉLÉVISION DES P&T - Three bouquets: basic, thematic and VOD; pricing to be announce. Trial only with a few hundred subscribers




FRANCE

2007 was a year of consolidation and shakeout,reports Sotires Eleftherioufrom Paris.

With a total of over 14 million broadband subscribers in France, a

26% increase in one year, the market in France has well and truly

taken off. The market leader, Orange (France Telecom) has almost

half the total, followed by Neuf Cegetel and Free.

All the major broadband suppliers include an IPTV service, either

included as part of the package, or an optional extra. In most cases,

IPTV is included as a part of the broadband package, the user only

needs to connect the dedicated broadband modem to the TV to get

it. There is therefore no detailed breakdown of how many

subscribers have actually connected the box to the TV. The

telecoms regulator ARCEP estimates that about 3.8m homes have

access to the IPTV facility (summer 2007) and about a third of these

subscribe to additional optional pay-TV services.

The prices are broadly similar, starting at €30 a month including

broadband and VoIP as well as IPTV. All operators (including

Orange) allow for ‘full unbundling’, which means that the user will no

longer have to pay a subscription for a France Telecom line.

Consequently, the platforms are differentiated on other criteria, such

as brand image. Alice for its free hotline, Darty for its after-sales

service, while Free is seen as maverick and innovative. It regularly

introduces new features, such as the possibility of using the

‘Freebox’ as a home media centre, a digital TV platform for home

videos, the possibility of using the subscribers their VoIP line from

any WiFi hotspot, and a ‘virtual fax’ with a second VoIP number free

of charge.

Free and Neuf-Cegetel have been fighting it out for second place

behind Orange. Much of Neuf’s growth has been by the acquisition

of other ISPs. Over the last year it has acquired AOL France, Club-

Internet, and has grown very close to mobile operator SFR (a merger

is on the cards) that in turn had acquired Tele2. Club-Internet dif-

fered from the other operators in using Microsoft TV software. Its

subscribers are now being ported to the Neuf-Cegetel platform.

In spite of earlier denials, Alice has now come up for sale.

Industry observers expect Neuf to acquire it, although Free is likely

to put in a bid if only to raise the price paid by Neuf.

The next battle, over optical fibre, has already begun. The top

three are all working hard at deploying optical fibre, as is cable

operator Numericable. Free is using point to point technology, while

the others are using GPON.

GERMANY

The incumbent telco hasbeen playing catch-up, butusing its dominant position,reports Dieter Brockmeyerfrom Frankfurt.

Over a year after its launch, incumbent telco Deutsche Telekom (DT)

was finally able to announce its 100,000th subscriber in mid-

December 2007, evidence that, compared to some other European

markets, IPTV is not yet a hit. However, the slow progress of the DT

ALICE (Tiscali) €29.95 per monthBroadband with unlimited VoIP telephone calls to 60 international destinations.Music download platform with EMI Music FranceDigital television: 64 channels included in basic; optional access toCanal+ Le Bouquet and CanalSat. Free channels include all the DTTchannels, plus a variety of news, general entertainment, lifestyle,leisure, society, plus 14 foreign language channels. Free hotline;VOD 850,000 broadband subscribers as of 31.06.2007

FREE (Iliad) €29.99 per monthBroadband with unlimited VoIP telephone calls to 71 international destinationsDigital television: about 200 television channels on IPTV, including allthe DTT channels, all the France 3 regional channels. Wide range ofother free channels – community, local, international. A number ofoptional pay channels plus optional access to Canal+ Le Bouquet andCanalSat.VOD. Some HD.User uplink channel. PVR included for recent subscribers. 2,767, 000broadband subscribers as of 30/09/2007

NEUF-CEGETEL Quad play service (including mobile telephone)€29.90 per monthUnlimited VoIP telephone to 50 international destinations. Unlimited music downloading platform included. 67 TV channels in basic, some HDCanal + Le Bouquet and CanalSat on optionPVR included for recent subscribers.3,123,000 broadband subscribers as of 30.09.2007, including thoseresulting from the acquisition of Club-Internet.

CLUB-INTERNET(now part of Neuf-Cegetel as from 1.01.2008) €29.90 per month fortriple play

DARTYBOX €29.90 per month for triple play with 40 IPTV channels. Apremium version including a PVR is offered for €34.90 a month. plus optional access to Canal+ Le Bouquet and CanalSat TELE2€19.90 per month. 41 IPTV channels, including 13 of the DTT chan-nels.

Triple play, €29.90 per month. Plus optional access to Canal+ LeBouquet and CanalSat and other optional channels 350,000 subscribers as of 31.06.2007 ORANGE(France Telecom) €39.90 for triple play, including over 50 IPTVchannels; VOD, optional subscription to CanalSat and Canal+. 6.58mbroadband subscribers as of 31.06.2007.


EURO DEPLOYMENT



service stemmed partly from internal turmoil, and re-organisation of

the telco’s businesses under the new management, led by Rene

Obermann.

It was not until the IFA consumer electronics fair in Berlin in the

late summer of 2007 that DT started to market the service actively.

The telco was aiming for 150,000 subscribers at the end of 2007,

with marketing becoming ever more aggressive.

Rumours in the German press suggest that DT is considering

offering its football package for free to news subscribers, currently

available at some €10 per month. DT has already tried a similar

incentive by granting the current season for free for the first 20,000

new subscribers. DT has also broadened the reach of the IPTV

service, previously only available to subscribers of the new VDSL

network providing 25MB/sec, only available to about 8m of the about

34m German homes, to subscribers of the 16 MB/sec. service

available in all of Germany.

As DT tries to defend its leading position in IPTV, the leading

feature in Obermann’s strategy to defend the group’s shrinking fixed

line revenues is by shifting the revenue streams to web-based

services. However, competition is also growing in IPTV and the pric-

ing is already coming down.

The longest-established competing service is the one under the

Alice brand launched, some six months prior to DT’s offer, by the

former regional telecommunications provider Hansenet in Hamburg.

The company was acquired by Telecom Italia and has been

gradually transformed into a national player.

In 2007 Telecom Italia also acquired the German AOL

subscribers and integrated them into the Alice family that today

counts about 2.3m DSL subscribers. The Alice IPTV service is now

available in about 100 German regions and Hansenet announced

that during 2007, the number will go up to 150. However, the

company does not announce any subscriber figures for its TV

service. Similarly, Vodafone-owned Arcor, the largest fully-fledged

competitor to DT, hasn’t revealed any subscriber numbers, hardly

surprising as the service was only launched in the autumn of 2007.

ITALY

Four operators are fightinghard for market share,reports Branislav Pekic fromRome.

Tiscali and Wind launched their IPTV services in December 2007

and that forced IPTV pioneers FastWeb and Telecom Italia to

upgrade their offers.

The four Italian telecoms operators offer platforms with at least 50

free broadcast channels, plus several premium pay channels. All

have signed similar deals with Sky Italia to make additional sport

and movie packages available to their clients. However, limited

coverage and poor unique content have contributed to the modest

take-up so far.

Tiscali TV: Tiscali launched its IPTV service in Milan, Rome

and Cagliari and will be gradually rolled out in the rest of Italy in

2008. Tiscali is offering the TV service free to subscribers until the

end of March 2008. Tiscali TV is a hybrid of IPTV and DTT, including

VoD, with over 50 channels on offer. The basic service costs €17 per

month, with themed content packages for children, music and

catch-up TV with RAI channels available for €4 each. An additional

Operator and Service DetailsDEUTSCHE TELEKOM – T-Com T-Entertain (-Basic, -Comfort, and–Comfort Plus). Cost: €49.95, €59.95 and €74.95 (including tele-phone flat and internet access and flat at 16 MB/sec) Additional€99.95 charge for set-top-box. Public channels; Free to Air channels;Pay TV channels. Additional Packages: T-Home Rusia: Detskij Mir,Euronews, Nashe Kino, PTP, RTVi, T-Home Polska: TVP Polonia, iTVNT-Home Türk: atv, Euro D, NTV, Show, Star, Kanal 7 Int, TGRT EUT-Home DigitTurk: like Turk + Turk max, LIG TVT-Home Italiano: Euronews, Rai Uno, Rai Due, Rai Tre

MTV Tune In: TV base, MTV dance, MTV hits, MTV2, VH1 Classic

Bundesliga auf Premiere: All first and second soccer league games livePremiere Sports: Formula 1 car races and other sports events livePremier Fussball: Champions League, UK Pemiere League etc. live.Premiere Blockbuster: 1, 2, 3, 4 (contemporary movies) Premiere Entertainment: Krimi, Serie, Nostalgie, Filmclassics,Filmfest, Wetter Fernsehen, Mezzo, Wein TV, Trace TV, Bundesliga aufPremiere (2 live games per week). Over 100,000 subscribers (by midDec 2007)

ALICE HOMETV Hansenet Telekommunikations GmbH (owned 100% byTelecom Italia)

€9.90 on top of Alice Deluxe telephone and Internet access service (16MB/sec.) €49.90 per month. MTV Tune In (€2.99), Big Entertainment (6months free, afterwards €14.90), Türk Premium (€22.90); Public chan-nels; Free to Air channels; Pay TV channels. Additonal Packages:MTV Tune In: MTV base, MTV dance, MTV hits, MTV2, VH1 ClassicTürk Premium: LIG TV, NTV Türkiye, Turkmax.About 2.3m DSL-clients, no details on TV break down released.

ARCOR-DIGITAL TV Basic Service - €9.95 on top of the ‘All InclusivePackage DSL 1600’(€34.95). Set-top-box €49.95Pay TV: Full Entertainment (€12.95), Cosmo Global / Sport & Male /Turk Basic / Polish (€5.95 each), Turk Premium (€22.95), Russian(€12.95). Subscriber figures not available.

ALICE HOME TV (Telecom Italia) €19.95 270 channels 100.000FastWebTV (FastWeb)€20 250 channels (digital satellite, digital terrestrial, VOD) 200.000

TISCALITV (Tiscali) €17 50 channels (digital satellite, digital terrestri-al, VOD) launched in December 2007 in 3 cities Infostrada TV (Wind)€7€15 (including Sky Italia) digital satellite, digital terrestrial, PPV, PVR,VOD) launched in December 2007


EURO DEPLOYMENT


fee of €2 to €7 is charged for services on demand. The decoder,

which is HD-ready, a remote control and Wi-Fi modem cost €4

a month.

An estimated 300,000 broadband subscribers have the technical

capabilities of accessing the IPTV service and their number should

double in 2008. The company hopes to transform 20-30% of its

2.2m-member base into Tiscali TV customers by the end of 2008.

Infostrada TV: Wind is aiming to complete IPTV coverage in

the coming months, as currently only 20 provincial capitals (two

million households) are connected. Infostrada TV is using Microsoft’s

Mediaroom platform, Alcatel-Lucent’s triple-play solutions and

Motorola’s 1616T set-top box.

For a monthly fee of €7 plus a €99 activation fee (currently

offered in promotion at €49.50), subscribers receive a STB equipped

with an HD recorder. The basic package includes the national digital

terrestrial channels plus a selection of foreign satellite channels. For

€15 a month (the promotional price valid until February 15), users

can also subscribe to the entire pay-TV offer of Sky Italia.

Alice Home TV: Telecom Italia’s IPTV service now has 100,000

users and the plan is to increase that number to 700,000 by 2009.

Among the novelties of the Alice Home TV service is the free

decoder that receives both broadband and DTT channels. There are

several subscription possibilities for viewers - from ‘Alice 7 Mega’

costing €19.95 with unlimited Internet navigation to ‘Alice 20 Mega’

which costs €24.95 a month. The basic package of Alice Home TV

contains 200 channels among live events, movies, entertainment,

documentaries and news. The premium offering includes on

demand movies and access to Sky Italia channels.

FastWeb TV: FastWeb already reaches 50% of the Italian

population and the operator plans to invest €2 billion over the next

four years to build an efficient and broader IPTV platform. FastWeb

recently launched a TV-only package for €20 a month. The offer also

includes the ReplayTV and the VideoRec services: the first permits

‘watch again’ for all programmes from RAI, Mediaset, MTV and LA7

aired in the previous three days; while the second records pro-

grammes without resorting to a separate device.

Until March 31, the cost of activating the basic FastWeb TV

service will be €9.90 a month (€20 after the promotional period).

Football and movies are available on demand mode for €3 and

€1.99 respectively.

SPAIN

The incumbent telco leadsthe market, reports DavidDel Valle from Madrid.

Spain’s IPTV market is dominated

by the telco group Telefónica that currently counts 500,000 sub-

scribers to its triple play service Imagenio, with plans to reach one

million by the end of the year. Four years after its launch, Imagenio

has become one of the most successful IPTV services in Europe,

capturing around 70% of new pay-TV clients in the country in com-

parison with a nearly flat growth experienced by the dominant pay-

TV operators, Sogecable, with two million subscribers to its DTH

service Digital Plus and Spain’s largest cable operator ONO, with

more than 900,000 pay-TV customers.

With a combined offer of 120 TV channels (to be 200 in the near

future), broadband Internet access and flat fee phone calls, the

company is intensifying its assault on the IPTV market through a joint

service with Sogecable, Trio Plus, including the premium channel

Canal Plus Digital. Other additional planned services include making

Imagenio available on its mobile phone service Movistar, which has

more than 22m clients. Imagenio also plans to launch an HDTV serv-

ice in the second quarter of 2008, that is why the company is

increasing threefold its ADSL speed and even testing a FTHH net-

work at 30 Megabytes. Over the last months, Imagenio has launched

a plethora of added-value services to allow its clients to actively

interact with its IPTV platform, among them Past TV, Shift TV, and

Rewind TV, using a decoder with a hard drive of up 160 GB.

The second largest IPTV operator in the country is France

Telecom-controlled Orange TV, with around 100,000 subscribers,

according to industry figures. The company, with 1.1m ADSL clients,

is becoming increasingly active in the market since its’ acquisition of

Ya.com. In addition, Orange has just signed an agreement with

Sogecable to launch a triple play offer, Trio Plus, from early 2008.

The new service will be similar to Telefonica-Sogecable’s current

offer, combining this time Orange’s high-speed Internet and mobile

phone services and the Spanish firm’s pay-TV platform, Digital Plus.

Orange and Sogecable have also teamed to launch Sogecable’s

Digital Plus Mobile via Orange’s 3G cell phones, including more than

20 channels. Both companies are planning to launch a HD version

of Digital Plus Mobile through Orange cell phones during 2008.

The third IPTV operator in the market is Jazztelia TV, with around

40,000 subscribers. This telco company, with 235,000 broadband

clients, was the first to compete with Telefonica in the IPTV race in

Spain, but its erratic pay-TV strategy has seen it miss fall short of its

high expectations. Grupalia Internet’s Superbanda TV (SB3) com-

pletes the list, with an offer of 40 TV channels and a small percent-

age of the Spanish IPTV market.


IMAGENIO (Telefonica) 120 Basic package: €11 per month.Familiar package: €19; Triple play: from €44.90 per monthTrio Plus, joint Telefonica-Sogecable offer: the triple play with morethan 50 TV channels (Canal + Digital) for €66.09 per month.500,000 subscribers.

JAZZTELIA TV (Jazztel) 38 Basic package: €11.55 per monthLatin Package: €2.90; Adult package: €9.45 per month; Triple play,from €41.50 per month. Around 20,000 subscribers.

ORANGE TV (France Telecom) 48 Triple play with 40 TV channels for€34.95 per month. Extended package (25 TV channels). €12. ORANGETRIO PLUS. Orange and Sogecable are likely to launch a joint IPTV offerduring 2008.Around 70,000 subsctbers.

SUPERBANDA - 40 From €19.95 (including, broadband Internet access upto 20 Megabytes, flat fee in national calls and TV). Subscibers N/A.




UNITED KINGDOM

The incumbent telco finallywent ‘above the line’ with itsservice. Now other operatorslook set to launch competingoffers, reports Colin Mann.

The closing days of 2006 saw BT’s long-awaited BT Vision service

finally launched, all be it ultra softly. BT has adopted a hybrid

approach to its content strategy; it combines more than 40 DTT-

based Freeview channels, digital recording capability and an

extensive library of video-on-demand content delivered over

broadband. The V-box, developed in conjunction with Philips,

contains a personal video recorder (PVR) able to store up to 80

hours of content, pause or rewind live TV and record. The service

launched using Microsoft middleware, and recently announced that

its’ next generation of set-top box would be supplied by Motorola.

Gavin Patterson. MD, BT Consumer, said the telco’s target market

was the 14m homes that did not currently take subscription TV. It

wasn’t until the late spring of 2007 that BT went ‘above the line’ in

promoting the service, with an extensive TV and poster campaign.

Tiscali TV began 2007 as ‘HomeChoice’ the service operated

since 2000 by Video Networks Limited, but was re-branded and

relaunched in March 2007, some six months after VNL took a 11.5%

share in Tiscali’s UK operation in exchange for 100% of VNL.

At the time, Tiscali TV was only available in London and

Stevenage, but in September 2007, the operator announced

expansion in Central, North and North West of England as well as

the M25 ring. Cities where telephone exchanges have been enabled

and support services include urban areas such as Milton Keynes,

Hemel Hempstead, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Leicester,

Liverpool, Salford and Warrington, with locations in the North East

and Scotland added from October.

Mary Turner, Chief Executive Tiscali UK said that the success of

DTT service Freeview had shown that customers wanted more than

five channels but didn’t necessarily want to pay a high monthly

subscription.

Between them the pair currently only boast some 100,000

subscribers – with BT reckoned to count for some 60,000, an

indication of the fierce competition in the UK pay-TV market, with

both cable and satellite already having established strong market

presence, and the success of the Freeview service. It is not

surprising that BT, which had an abortive presence in cable TV

during the mid-1980s to mid-1990s, has adopted the hybrid

approach, with the Freeview tuner offering a larger range of linear

programming, but with additional content available on-demand

either via a subscription or pay-per-view.

At the beginning of 2007, Virgin Media the newly-formed cable

MSO created through the merger of NTL and Telewest, revealed

plans to extend its reach nationally, by rolling out services into

non-cabled areas, enabling it to compete on a level playing field

with key competitors. In May 2007, broadband access provider

Cable & Wireless announced a four-year agreement with Virgin

Media to become its exclusive unbundled local loop (LLU) network

provider on a wholesale basis until 2011. Neil Berkett, Chief

Operating Officer, Virgin Media, said the deal was an important step

towards making Virgin Media a truly national brand, allowing it to

offer enhanced broadband and home phone services to an

additional four million customers, laying a foundation for the

provision of quadplay services to the 50% of households outside its

cable network. Since then, there has been little heard of the service,

and the operator admitted in its latest results that it is concentrating

on its existing ‘on-net’ high-speed broadband offering

France Telecom’s Orange TV had been expected to launch an

IPTV service commercially before the end of 2007, but the service

has only been rolled out on a trial basis to around 350 paying

Orange customers in London and Leeds. Orange confirmed that the

service platform was up and running but that it was important we get

it right for the commercial launch. A full commercial roll-out was

likely at some point in the first half of 2008, with certain cities

targeted.

Ironically, given that 02 used to be the mobile arm of BT, recent

reports suggest that the operator, now owned by Spain’s Telefónica,

is to trial an IPTV service in 2008, following its success with IPTV in

the Czech market. The move follows O2’s launch in the latter part of

2007 of broadband over the network of Be, an ISP that O2 acquired

in June 2006.


BT VISION V-box digital TV recorder - free; One off connection fee £30or Install BT Vision yourself – free. BT Total Broadband connectionrequired; from only £8.95 a month for the first six months, £17.99thereafter. Up to 40 digital TV including E4, Film4, BBC Three, BBCNews 24 and CITV and 30 radio channels through TV aerial. Pause andrewind live TV and record up to 80 hours.

On Demand Entertainment - Pay per view from 29p each; Viewing packsfrom £4 a month. Free V-box for new or existing customers signing upto a new broadband contract for 12 months (18 months with Option 1)otherwise £199.

One-off connection fee of £30 applies to all customers. BT Home Hubrequired – included with BT Total Broadband Option 2 & 3, £50/£30(phone/online orders) with Option 1. 60,000 subscribers (Est.)

TISCALI TV £19.99 a month: Up to 8Mb unlimited broadband; Free wire-less router and set top box; TV Variety Pack;*; Free weekend UK andinternational calls; One-off £30 set up fee; Free phone line rental.

£24.99 a month: As above, but with free anytime UK and internationalcalls

*Variety Packincluding Sky One, FX, ITV2, Sky Sports News, Paramount Comedy;Over 60 digital TV and radio channels; Over 350 on demand pro-grammes; Instant access to over 1,000 movies on demand; Free 7 daycatch up service on popular BBC, Channel 4 and FX programmes.* Play, Fwd, Rwd, Pause functionality on all on demand films and programmes. 40,000 subscribers (Est.)

EURO DEPLOYMENT


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