BNS White Paper on Selecting IPTV Middleware

BNS, the IPTV consultancy headquartered in Hong Kong, has published a white paper that provides guidance on how to select middleware.

This white paper provides some practical advice and is worth reading by those starting to think about these issues.

Vote in Deutsche Telekom IPTV Contest

Deutsche Telekom is offering the opportunity to vote for one of the 10 semifinalists for its IPTV interactive application contest at http://www.interactive-tv-award.com/. The status of the contest can be found at http://www.interactive-tv-award.com/dev/.

Hong Kong Broadband has 136K IPTV Subscribers

Hong Kong Broadband, a subsidiary of City Telecom, reached 136 thousand IPTV subscribers at the end of February 2008. It added 8 thousand subscribers during the previous six month period. The company also had 279 thousand broadband subscribers at the same time, adding 32 thousand over the previous six months.

City Telecom dropped the price of its 100 Mbps broadband service in order to increase its subscriber base. This contributed to the increase in its broadband business. Its ARPU across all its services remained flat during the period at about $23 per month. The company sets its broadband prices significantly below PCCW, the incumbent Telco in Hong Kong.

City Telecom is an aggressive competitor in a tough market. It increased its total revenues by nearly 11 percent year over year and has shown a profit over the last 18 months. This is a real achievement.

Belgacom Ends 11Q08 with 349K IPTV Subscribers

Belgacom added 43,931 IPTV subscribers in 1Q08, ending the quarter with 349,250 subscribers. It added 200 thousand IPTV subscribers since the end of 1Q07.

The ARPU for its IPTV service grew to 17.4o euros in 1Q08 compared to 13.40 euros in 4Q07. Its IPTV revenue grew from 8 million euros in 1Q07 to 18 million euros in 1Q08.

Belgacom's IPTV service picked up momentum in 1Q08. It appears to be doing well against the entrenched cable services.

Telefonica at 554K IPTV Subscribers

Telefonica added 42.9 IPTV subscribers in 1Q08 in Spain giving a total of 554.045 thousand Imagenio IPTV subscribers. It estimates that it has more than 13 percent share of the pay TV market in Spain.

Telefonica also added 14 thousand IPTV subscribers in the Czech Republic, giving it a total of 87.2 IPTV subscribes at the end of 1Q08.

Telefonica continues to make steady progress with its IPTV service in Spain an the Czech Republic. It also has large cable networks in South America. It did not report on its nascent IPTV activities in that region.

BT at 250K IPTV Subscribers

BT announced that it had 214 thousand IPTV subscribers at the end of 1Q08, which is an increase of 94 thousand during the quarter. It had 250 thousand IPTV subscribers as of its announcement on May 15, 2008.

BT stated that it added more TV subscribers during 1Q08. It said that Sky satellite added 56 thousand subscribers and Virgin cable added 37 thousand subscribers during 1Q08.

BT stated that 68 percent of its BT Vision subscribers take a premium package when they subscribe to the service. It offers 4,660 hours of on demand content and had an average of 29 views per month per subscriber.

BT had an excellent quarter with its BT Vision IPTV service. It appears that its strategy of supplementing Freeview digital terrestrial broadcast TV with on demand services seems to be working for it. The one question is what kind of ARPU is it generating.

Free Adds 120K IPTV Subscribers

Free in France announced that it added 137 broadband subscribers in 1Q08 giving it a total of 3.014 million broadband subscribers at the end of the quarter. Its base service costs 29.99 euros per month. Its ARPU during the quarter was 36.20 euros per month.

Free enhanced its IPTV service in several ways during 1Q08:

• It introduced a subscription video on demand service that includes HD content for 9.99 euros per month.
• It introduced power line communications as a standard feature for its Freebox HD set-top box/home gateway.
• It introduced the ability for its subscribers to create websites that can be viewed on the TV
• A promotion for the Canalsat premium package at 10 euros per month for the first year rather than the standard price of 20.90 euros per month

Free did not announce its number of unbundled subscribers at the end of 1Q08, which translate directly to IPTV capable subscribers. I estimate based on its broadband numbers that it added about 120 thousand IPTV capable subscribers giving it a total of 2.4 million.