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IPTV Deployments Featured Article
July 21, 2008
UTStarcom Eyes Growing IPTV Market in China
By Michael Dinan, TMCnet Editor
Eyeing a rapidly growing IPTV (News - Alert) market on the other side of the world, an IP-based solutions company with offices in Alameda, California, today announced that it’ll provide the platform for a new advertising system in China.
Officials from UTStarcom, Inc. say that a subsidiary of China Telecom (News - Alert) Corporation Limited wants to use their IPTV platform “RollingStream” to deploy a new system. In building the video-based advertising for the subsidiary, called Guangzi Telecom Company Limited, officials from UTStarcom (News - Alert) say they’re doing the first work of its kind in the communist nation.
According to Robert Wu, chief executive officer of UTStarcom China, the company has a background in deploying and scaling “advance” IPTV solutions.
“The advertising deployment with Guangxi Telecom is a strong demonstration of how UTStarcom is enabling new interactive applications based on our RollingStream platform, and we’ll continue to work with leading service providers to provide innovative services for their customers,” Wu said.
The work marks the industry’s belief that IPTV will grow in a place where its future once seemed uncertain.
One European firm, Research and Markets, predicted that lack of awareness of IPTV and tight government regulations could suppress the technologies’ growth in China.
And yet, the research firm reported, “Due to slow progress of digital TV in China, IPTV industry can develop with fairly wide window of opportunity. In the next three to five years, we predict that IPTV will face intense competition.”
The prediction that IPTV in China is facing an opportunity, made three years ago, appears to be coming true.
According to one report of statistics from researchers Frost & Sulivan, the number of IPTV subscribers in the region is predicted to grow from the current 1.5 million to 27.4 million by 2013. Deployment will be strengthened by the explosion of broadband in various high-growth markets across the region, as well as through advancements in transmission, compression and watermarking technologies that have enabled more service providers to move toward IPTV delivery.
UTStarcom officials say their RollingStream IPTV system now supports more than 850,000 live IPTV subscribers globally and maintains a current total system capacity of more than 2.5 million subscribers. The high numbers are a result of successful deployments in China with China Netcom (News - Alert) and China Telecom, in India with Bharti Airtel, MTNL/Aksh and United Telecoms Limited, in Sri Lanka with SLT, in Japan with Softbank, in Latin America with Brasil Telecom and in Taiwan with Markwell, company officials say.
Michael Dinan is a TMCNet Editor. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.
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