Open IPTV Forum Interview

Last Friday I held an interview with the Open IPTV Forum. I spoke with Yunchao Hu of Ericsson who is acting as chairman of the Steeering Group and Barry Gravenhorst of Sony who is the vice chairman of the Steering Group of the Open IPTV Forum. They described four key objectives for the organization:

• It will specify a common and open end to end solution for supplying a variety of TV and Internet multimedia services to consumer devices in the home network.
• It will consider establishing a certification and logo program.
• It will include all the key players - customer equipment, content providers, network operators, service providers, network vendors, home device vendors
• It will strive to bring standards to the market more quickly than traditional standards organizations.

The organization plans to work in the following areas:

• A common IPTV Terminal Function (ITF) that supports services from both an open Internet and a managed network environment.
• Interactive and personalized services and the integration with communications services.
• Convergence of IPTV and multimedia services across different access technologies.
• Easy integration of 3rd party content offerings.

The Open IPTV Forum will base its work on existing technologies and standards wherever possible. It will define the necessary extensions to fill gaps and provide these extensions back to the relevant standards bodies. Candidate technologies include:

• DLNA
• IMS
• DVB-IPI
• Internet portals
• Web browsers
• Multimedia middleware

As reported earlier the founding members included ATT, France Telecom, Telecom Italia, Siemens, Ericsson, Sony, Phillips, Panasonic, and Samsung.

They identified three reasons why the Forum was formed:

• No other standards body is covering all aspects of an end to end IPTV solution in a timely manner.
• To address the combination of managed networks and the open Internet for service delivery.
• To address the blending of IPTV and communications services.

Open IPTV Forum membership is open to companies that will actively contribute to the Forum's objectives. It expects to complete the detailed arrangements to support new applicants after the summer.

You can get more information at the Open IPTV Forum at www.openiptvforum.org

The Open IPTV Forum is attacking important problems. Today every IPTV middleware package and sometimes separate deployments of the same middleware package have different interfaces. This makes it difficult for the set-t0p box manufacturers and their silicon suppliers. These companies have to go out and develop new software for every middleware package they want to support at a minimum. This is impossible for consumer device companies. There is no way that Sony or any other manufacturer will put an IPTV set-top box into their TVs if different software has to be loaded into it for every IPTV network.

The other work items for the Forum are also good choices. Personalised and interactive services are very important differentiators for IPTV services. The Forum must address the functions required for interactive and other new forms of advertising as well.

The convergence of IPTV and IMS is another important issue. I wrote a report on this for MRG http://www.mrgco.com last year. Bringing telephone services to the TV is another important differentiator, one that the U.S. cable companies are working diligently on.

Integrating the open Internet with managed IPTV services is also important. We will release a new report on this subject the week after next. The Forum is planning to do it right by addressing how content will be brought from the Internet as well as how third party content providers can provide service in addition to the managed IPTV service.

ATIS in the U.S. and the ITU have similar objectives to the Open IPTV Forum. All of this work will need to be harmonized and brought to market. It may be too late. Most of the large telcos have already committed to IPTV architectures. They will have to somehow evolve to Open IPTV Forum standards over time if this work is to be meaningful. It is just not clear how this will occur.

ITU Delivers IPTV Standards

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) announced standards for IPTV. The standards were built with technical contributions from leading service providers and manufacturers. The new standards were developed by the Focus Group on IPTV (FG IPTV) in ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T).

These standards are intended to give service providers — broadcasters, ISPs, cable operators or telecom service providers — control over their platforms and their offerings. Standards will encourage innovation, help mask the complexity of services, guarantee quality of service, ensure interoperability and help players remain competitive.

Contained within the documents produced by the Focus Group are the high-level architecture and frameworks needed by service providers in order to rollout IPTV services. ITU’s next phase of IPTV work — IPTV-GSI (global standards initiative) — will centre on the preparation of standards based on documents produced by FG IPTV as well as on the detailed protocols required.

Twenty-one documents covering IPTV requirements, architecture, quality of service (QoS), security, digital rights management (DRM), unicast and multicast, protocols, metadata, middleware and home networks will be submitted to the ITU-T Study Group charged with progressing and distributing the work. The IPTV-GSI will build on the momentum generated over the past 20 months, and it is foreseen that contributions and participation will continue to increase.

The first meeting of IPTV-GSI will convene in Seoul, Republic of Korea from 15 to 22 January 2008.

IPTV standards are surely needed, but they will probably be too late to strongly influence the major IPTV deployments already underway in Europe, Asia, and North America. These IPTV services have made their implementation decisions and are not likely to change them in major ways to accommodate new standards.

Cisco Introduces IPTV SLA

Cisco has introduced an IPTV SLA that is explained at this link. It provides monitoring of the IPTV broadcast flows through the IP network and delivers quality measurements, channel mapping, and route path analysis. It couples the multicast protocol with the video channel lineups in a monitoring system. It provides problem isolation by offering a common platform for network and video operators.

Cisco's IPTV SLA includes:

• IPTV Multicast Flow Tracing, which isolates IPTV multicast flows to the network segments responsible for transmission.
• IPTV Video-Quality Measurements for loss and latency that will result in video artifacts. This video measurement is correlated with the multicast IPTV flow tracing for problem correlation.
• IPTV Channel Mapping, which reports the channels that are carried in a multicast flow through the network in order to determine the impact of anomalies in the IPTV transport network.
• Health Checks based on rules created on a per flow basis. Violations to this rule set, such as path or pps, will result in notification to the network operator.
• IPTV-Related Multicast Flows, which automatically finds related multicast flows carrying similar video content to help operators isolate problems and determine their impact.
• Integrated Router Statistics provide multicast diagnostics is provided on a per-flow basis, including router and switch statistics.
• Northbound Notification, which integrates with the service provider's service manager applications by providing northbound trap notifications of IPTV flow alerts.

It appears that Cisco is providing some important capabilities for monitoring IPTV traffic. From this description, it is focusing on the network layer. Other approaches, such as those offered by Brix, Ineoquest, and Bridge Technologies provide monitoring at the video layer by decoding the MPEG packets and identifying the visual impact directly.

I think that Cisco's IPTV SLA is a useful tool, but I also think that video layer monitoring on an end-to-end basis will also be required to get a full picture of video quality.

Ericsson's IPTV Strategy

I spent a day this week at Ericsson's Analyst Relations meeting in Boston. Ericsson clearly intends to leverage Tandberg's strong position in the IPTV headend and content management markets. It also positions its Redback, Entrisphere, and Marconi acquisitions as giving it strength in IPTV networking and access.

Ericsson is also embracing the work of the Open IPTV Forum in developing an open approach to IPTV. The Open IPTV Forum is incorporating IPTV into IMS. Ericsson told me that it will be possible for existing IPTV middleware and other software component providers to adapt their products to theis Open IPTV architecture.

Ericsson characterized the existing IPTV systems as First Generation and stated that its conversations with IPTV operators indicate that they have strong concerns about the ability of these systems to scale. Ericsson told me that it thinks that many of these systems will top out at 500 thousand IPTV subscribers. It expects that moving to a second genreation of IPTV systems will create major opportunities for it.

There is no question that Ericsson is late to the IPTV party. Its acquisition of Tandberg clearly gives it a strong presence in the market but not as a full service provider.

It will be interesting to see if its view of the market will pan out. Personally, I think it will be much more difficult for Ericsson, or any other large full service system supplier, to break into the market at this time.

ATIS IPTV Interoperability Forum Issues Phase 1 Specs

The ATIS IPTV Interoperability Forum released five new standards establishing IPTV’s foundational framework.

• IPTV Linear TV Service (ATIS-0800018), which establishes IPTV’s fundamental building blocks for expansion into more advanced services, including pay-per-view and next-generation gaming.
• IPTVConsumer Domain Device Configuration Metadata (ATIS-0800022), which specifies the data structures (metadata) required to provide basic information needed to acquire IPTV content.
• Media Formats and Protocols for IPTV Services (ATIS-0800013), which is a comprehensive listing of the protocols and media formats required for the implementation of IPTV-related services.
• IPTV Terminal Metadata Specification (ATIS-0800029), which defines the data structure that facilitates the exchange of user-related data and the IPTV devices
• Fault Codes for IPTV (ATIS-0800028), which includes a categorized listing of fault codes for IPTV functions and components.

These documents are available from the ATIS Document Store.

This is a good effort but it still seems like too little too late.

Optibase Focusing on Asia

I had an interview with Optibase to discuss its recent announcement that its encoders are being included in the Bharti Airtel IPTV service in India. Optibase is working with UTStarcom at Bharti. UTStarcom is supplying the middleweare, the video on demand systems, the set-top boxes, and the system integration.



In addition to Bharti Airtel, Optibase is included in the IPTV deployments in India by Aksh and Time Broadband. Both of these companies have been licensed by MTNL to offer IPTV services over MTNL's network.

UTStarcom is working with three major integrators and IPTV suppliers UTStarcom, ZTE, and Huawei. UTStarcom has a strong position in the IPTV markets in China and India. ZTE also has a strong position in the IPTV market in China. Huawei is the largest Chinese systems company and has a number of IPTV deployments Asia, the Russian Federation, and Africa.

Optibase expects that its relationships with UTStarcom, Huawei, and ZTE will provide it with a strong entry into the emerging IPTV market in China. Optibase has started to work on AVS products so that it can support the Chinese video compression standard.

Optibase is also making strong sales efforts into Eastern Europe and the Russian Federation. It is seeing a lot of RFPs from Eastern European service providers at this time.

Video encoders are generally acquired early in deployment of an IPTV service. A smaller service provider will need only a single headend system and will fully populate it with encoders before the service goes commercial. A large country will typically add additional headends as the IPTV service is expanded to support additional metropolitan areas.

Optibase's strategy of focusing on India, China, and Eastern Europe is sound. This where the new IPTV services are are being deployed today. The growth potential in both India and China is very strong. Optibase can expect significant continuing business from these two companies over several years as their IPTV services expand.

On Telecoms Offers IPTV in Greece

On Telecoms is a competitive carrier in Greece that offers broadband, IPTV, and VoIP services over an ADSL-2+ broadband network. It offers three broadband bundles:

• IPTV and VoIP for 27 euros per month.
• VoIP and Internet for 32 euros per month.
• IPTV, VoIP, and Internet for 35 euros per month

It currently offers 30 broadcast channels and 1,200 video on demand titles. The video on demand titles are offered at prices that range from 1.99 to 2.99 euros. It also offers 3 days of catch up TV.

On Telecoms currently has about 45 thousand subscribers with about 3 thousand video on demand views per week. More that 80 percent of its broadband subscribers subscribe to IPTV services. The companies expects strong growth in its IPTV service and believes that it will ha e 300 thousand IPTV subscribers by the end of 2010. It is the only IPTV service in Greece today, but expect that other carriers will offer IPTV services in the future.

On Telecoms looks like it is on its way to establishing a strong IPTV service in Greece. Its technical leadership came from FastWeb in Italy and is quite experienced in both IPTV technology and marketing. This is certainly a strong background.

Belgacom Approaches 200K IPTV Subscribers

Belgacom reported that it had 191,348 IPTV subscribers at the end of 2Q07, an increase of 51,683 in the first half and 41,857 in the second quarter. It generated 16 million euros in revenue from its IPTV service in 1H07, which is up 11 million euros from 1H06. It achieved a 14.6 euro average monthly customer spending for its IPTV service in 1H07 compared to 10.9 euros in 1H06.

Part of this increase can be attributed to double play and triple play bundles that Belgacom introduced in 2Q07. The double play bundle consists of Internet plus IPTV and the triple play bundle consists of Internet plus IPTV plus mobile. Both of these bundles can be acquired with without a voice line.

Belgacom's "try & buy" program generated significant churn in 1Q07, which was absorbed by mid-May. The end of the “try & buy” promotion positively impacted the Belgacom TV ARPU, which grew to EUR 14.6 over the first six months of 2007, equal to a year-on-year increase of 34%.

The factors that contributed to Belgacom's success in 2Q07 were the:

• Introduction of Comfort View (Pause TV, instant Rewinding, PVR) in February
• Introduction of Belgacom TV over ADSL Time in March
• Additional channels (MTV, Nickelodeon) in Classic+ offer in April
• An extended video-on-demand offering -including concerts-, increasing the VoD usage
• Introduction of 'Internet +TV' packs at EUR 40 (ADSL Light) and EUR 50 (ADSL GO) in
  April, with option to include Mobile services (Smile 10)
• Launch of Walled Garden applications (yellow/white pages, railway schedules,
  holidays, news etc) in May

Belgacom has a major FTTN program underway and increased the penetration of its VDSL service from 44 percent to 52 percent of its households. Its IPTV service is available to 80 percent of Belgian households. In 1H07 Belgacom invested 53 million euros in its FTTN deployment and 45 million euros in its IPTV service.

Belgacom seems to be on track for significant growth with its IPTV service. I think that this shows that an IPTV service can compete well in a saturated cable market where the bulk of customers receive only analog services. Cable companies that want to defend against IPTV services need to upgrade their customers to digital services as quickly as they can.

Belgacom Adds 100 Thousand IPTV Subscribers

Belgacom announced that it had 139,665 IPTV subscribers at the end of 2006, which is an increase of 100 thousand subscriber over the end 2005. It achieved its original target of 100 thousand IPTV subscribers for 2006 by the end of the third quarter. Belgacom stated that it added nearly 34 thousand IPTV subscribers in the fourth quarter.

Belgacom's IPTV monthly ARPU increased from 11.9 euros per month at the beginning of 2006 to 12.6 euros per month at the end of the year due to increasing use of video on demand services. It expects to add IPTV subscribers in 2007 at the same pace as 2006 and expects its monthly IPTV ARPU to grow to 15 euros.

Belgacom's IPTV business generated revenue of 15 million euros in 2006 with costs of 53 million euros. This gives an EBITDA loss for its IPTV business of 38 million euros.

Belgacom deployed ADSL-2+in 2006 in additon to VDSL and now is able to provide TV service 79.5 percent of the population of Belgium by the end of 2006.

You can get Belgacom's full fourth quarter 2006 release at

http://www.belgacom.be/company/com/jsp/static/20070302_ar2006.jsp

Belgacom is doing very well with its IPTV deployment in a very competitive market. It is winning its customers away from the cable companies by introducing digital services before the cable companies and leading the market in terms of services such as video on demand.

Belgacom is a good example of how IPTV should be deployed, especially in Europe. There is no reason why its success cannot be replicated across the continent.

Quative IPTV SDP Interview

Deutsche Telekom is starting a pilot Dual Play TV service that will provide interactive TV, digital terrestrial broadcast TV, and on demand TV delivered over the Internet. This pilot will use an ADB hybrid set-top box and the Quative IPTV Service Delivery Platform (SDP). The following link will take you to German language website for this pilot service.

I spoke with Sebastian Kramer, Quative's CEO. He was formerly head of Alcatel's OMP IPTV middleware project, so he has extensive experience in the IPTV industry. Quative is a subsidiary of the Kudelski group, which also owns IPTV and digital TV content security, Nagravision.

Sebastian said that the Deutsche Telekom Dual Play TV service is separate from the company's T-Home IPTV service that is based on Microsoft's software platform. The Quative SDP was used to build a middleware system that integrates the Internet delivered on demand content with the over the air digital terrestrial service. He said that it offers a superior electronic program guide that includes both services.

He believes that Quative's SDP approach will facilitate B-to-B partnerships that will permit companies to reach consumers through their TVs. He cited an example where BMW might be able to address the 10 percent of the market that is likely to buy its products. BMW would be able to offer videos that feature is autos as well as interactive features such as configurators for each of its models.

Sebastian settled on an SDP approach to middleware because he found at Alcatel that most sales turned what was supposed to be a standard product into a project. Service providers wanted a level of competition that required a significant amount of unique development. He concluded from this experience that an SDP architecture that provides the building blocks that the service provider can use to build a custom middleware system would allow Quative to offer a standard product that service providers can use to create the IPTV system that they really want.

He expects that Quative's SDP will be applied in a variety of hybrid scenarios that include digital terrestrial and IPTV, satellite and IPTV, as well as even cable and IPTV. He also expects that Quative's systems will be used by pure TelcoTV services.

Sebastian and Quative have a smart strategy. They have learned from long experience as an IPTV subscriber. It is likely that they will be successful with Tier 2 and Tier 3 carriers along with hybrid applications. These emerging hybrid services are likely to become Quative's most interesting market.

IPTV Subscribers Increasing in China

The number of IPTV users in Jiangsu Province China increase to more than 200,000 by the end of September 2008, compared to 35,000 at the end of 2007. This is an increase of 471 percent in the first nine months of 2008, the sharpest rise in IPTV use in the country.

Jiangsu Province started offering IPTV services to residents in the second half of 2006. China Telecom's local branch operates the service, in collaboration with content providers Shanghai Media Group, the state-run Xinhua news agency, and ZTE.

Shanghai now has more than 600,000 IPTV users as of the end of September, up approximately 150 percent from the end of 2007. At the end of 2007, Hangzhou City had the most IPTV subscribers of any IPTV subscription region with 250,000, while Shanghai Municipality had 240,000 users and Henan Province ranked third with 200,000 users. Jiangsu Province ranked just ninth at the time with 35,000 users, far fewer than the top five regions. The pace of growth has slackened in some regions where IPTV once developed rapidly, such as Heilongjiang Province and Henan Province.

China is on its way to becoming the leading IPTV country as it has done with broadband. However, its IPTV success is still concentrated in only a few provinces. Its ultimate success depends on expanding this success to all provinces.

China Telcos Wants IPTV Deregulation

China Telecom and China Netcom called for the deregulation of the IPTV market in China. They stated that there is a worldwide trend to deregulate IPTV; however, they stated that it is not happening in China. For example, regulators have only allowed China Telecom to offer IPTV commercial services in only six cities.
The two firms hope that IPTV can provide them with a major source of broadband revenue, but broadcasting authorities are concerned that IPTV could hurt cable TV operators. In December 2005, the broadcasting authorities in Quanzhou, in East China's Fujian Province, ordered the closure of an IPTV service jointly run by China Telecom and the Shanghai Media Group, despite the fact that the Shanghai Media Group had been granted a license to operate the service by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television.

A new law is being developed to address this issue but is not expected to be passed before March 2008.

China Telecom has 210,000 IPTV subscribers with 150,000 in Shanghai. China Netcom has more than 140,000 IPTV subscribers.

The short term prospects for IPTV in China are cloudy at best. There is still a lot of uncertainty that is based on how the government will sort out the conflict between the cable and the telephone companies. It is likely that this will be sorted out in the next year or two, but it is wise to take a conservative approach for now.

UTStarcom Making Strides in India

I recently had an interview with UTStarcom about its recent announcement that Bharti Airtel has selected it for its IPTV service. I have a lot to learn about the Indian market, so they patiently gave me a lot of background information. I will repeat the major points here on the assumption that I am not the only one who needs to learn the basics.

There are two state run companies BSNL and MTNL that are the incumbent operators in India. MTNL is the smaller of the two companies and serves the two largest metro areas centered on Delhi and Mumbai. BSNL is much larger than MTNL and serves the rest of India, including the rural areas. India is densely populated even in rural areas, especially when compared to the U.S.

There are also three large privately held c0mpetitive telcos in India:

• Bharti is the largest of these competitors and is headquartered in Delhi, but serves the entire country.
• Reliance is headquartered in Mumbai and serves the entire country.
• Tata is headquartered in Mumbai and serves the southern part of India.

Bharti Airtel selected UTStarcom's RollingStream system for the IPTV service that it is developing. UTStarcom has been in trial with Bharti for the last 2 1/2 years. Bharti plans to start its IPTV service in 8 cities in the Delhi area. It has committed to 120 thousand IPTV subscribers to start and than expects to grow to 450 thousand subscribers. Its IPTV service will have more than 100 broadcast channels along with on demand content.

Bharti expects to offer IPTV in other regions after it is established in the Delhi region. It would like to have the service widely deployed across its in network in time for the Commonwealth games in 2010.

MTNL has also selected UTStarcom for its IPTV service. MTNL also expects to launch its IPTV service in the Delhi area.

These deployments in India should keep UTStarcom in the leading position in the IPTV market in Asia and to be one of the leaders globally. In fact, UTStarcom is now competiting with Motorola, Microsoft, and Alcatel for global leadership in IPTV market.

China Telecom Expects 2M Subscribers in 2008

China Telecom's IPTV expects to have 2 million IPTV subscribers by the end of 2008. Shanghai is at 380 thousand IPTV subscribers today and is expected to reach 700 thousand by the end of 2008.

Getting people to pay for IPTV services is an issue in China. There are several dimensions to this issue:

• The Chinese government restricts TV content and prevents many good foreign TV dramas from being shown on TV in the country. People in China are reluctant to pay for TV if they cannot get this kind of content.
• Pirated programming is broadly available in China. People are reluctant to pay for a TV service when they can buy what they want to see on the street.
• People in China believe that TV should be free since the Chinese government has always defined TV as a free service.
• IPTV service providers are not doing a good job of marketing their services. They are not analyzing their consumers.

In spite of this the Chinese market has major advantages.

• The sheer size of the population means that it will generate a very large IPTV subscriber based even with low service penetration.
• The Chinese government is developing IPTV service and is likely to introduce new policies that support the service.
• Chinese viewers want choice, which will help IPTV succeed to the degree that it meets this demand.

The IPTV operators in China have all the problems that IPTV operators have elsewhere. In addition, it has to face the content limitation put on it by the government. This is a serious problem in China. When I was there recently, I saw news broadcasts that were censored with the screen going black when the offending content was broadcast. I was also not able to access this blog! I did not think that I was that dangerous.

France Telecom at 1.4M IPTV Subscribers

France Telecom ended 1Q08 with 1.407 million IPTV subscribers across all of its European operations, an increase of 164 thousand in the quarter. These numbers break down as follows:

• 1.282 million IPTV subscribers in France with an increase of 133 thousand in 1Q08.
• 49 thousand IPTV subscribers in Poland with an increase of 9 thousand in 1Q08.
• 75 thousand IPTV subscribers in the rest of Europe with an increase of 21 thousand in 1Q08.

France Telecom also stated that it had 10,096 FTTH subscribers at the end of 1Q08 and that its service passed 187,322 homes.

France Telecom continues to make good progress with its IPTV service and is at or near the top of the list of IPTV service providers globally. I believe that France Telecom offers IPTV service in Spain, the Netherlands, and in Slovakia as well as in France and Poland. It plans to introduce IPTV service in the UK in 2008.

DSL Forum Issues IPTV Standard

The DSL Forum issued Technical Report, TR-135 Data Model for a TR-069 Enabled STB and the amendment of TR-069 in order to expedite IPTV rollouts and improve the way operators manage their IPTV offering.

TR-135 defines the data model for remote management of Digital Television (IPTV or broadcast) functionality on set-top boxes using protocols defined in TR-069 Amendment 2 and TR-106. This report provides the data model for describing set-top box capabilities such as PVR, IGMP, quality of service, as well as providing a means to enable video service performance monitoring. General use cases are also described in the report, including standard data model profiles that would typically be seen while remotely managing a device of this nature.

In TR-135, the Auto-Configuration Server (ACS) may perform some initial configuration of a newly installed set-top box , but its main functions are configuration of set-top box parameters for trouble management and collection of statistics for Quality of Service (QoS)/Quality of Experience (QoE) monitoring.

The goals of TR-135 are:

• Enable configuration by the ACS of those objects and parameters that are not the responsibility of the IPTV Service Platform.
• Enable operational status monitoring and checking of specific parameters of an STB from an ACS.
• Enable performance monitoring of an arbitrary set of STBs, from one to millions, through estimates of QoS and QoE
• Support various types of set-top boxes, including DTT and IP STBs, with or without PVR and other optional functionality.
• Accommodate set-top box devices that are embedded as part of an Internet Gateway Device (IGD).
• Accommodate set-top box devices that are standalone, i.e. implemented in separate hardware devices.

The trouble management feature of TR-135 means a trained technician may take control of the set-top box remotely to do a number of tasks such as upgrading software and performing diagnostics. This will enable faults to be fixed more quickly and effectively, and negates the needs for many IPTV related truck rolls.

Improved performance management will also allow the automatic monitoring of the set-top box performance. This will enable providers to produce reports on QoS parameters, such as average bit rate, jitter and packet loss ratio; QoE parameters, including including visual quality indicator; and usage statistics, for example, how many set-top boxes are on at a certain time and for how long each of them remains tuned to a certain channel. set-top box QoS/QoE reporting capabilities will allow measurements to be done at the service level, which is of fundamental importance to any operator.

Also approved at the meeting was the update to TR-069, TR-069 Amendment 2, which arose from collaboration and input from the Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) organization. The DVB Project required support for Multicast download protocols. Working closely together, TR-069 Amendment 2 was developed and now contains changes that add support for Multicast downloads, including some additional fault codes, and for autonomous file transfers, transfers that were not directly requested by the ACS. These changes define CWMP v1.1, and therefore include some new rules for guaranteeing interoperability between CWMP v1.0, v1.1 and future CWMP versions.

Together TR-135 and TR-069 Amendment 2 provide the first stage of the IPTV evolution. These reports set the bar high for quality delivery and customer experience, and give the service provider the tools needed to customize and dramatically improve their IPTV offerings, while reducing their support overhead on new IPTV implementations.

For more about these technical reports check out the following link.

This is important work because TR-069 is the fundamental technology that has been developed to provide remote monitoring, management, and support of devices on home networks, including set-top boxes.

France Telecom's Will Pass 1M IPTV Subs in 2007

France Telecom ended its 1Q07 at the end of March with 745 thousand IPTV subscribers in France, up 168 thousand or 29 percent over the quarter. If this rate it will double its IPTV subscriber base during 2007 and up with well over 1 million IPTV subscribers. It had 862 thuosand video on demand views during the quarter up from 517 thousand during 4Q06.

France Telecom's IPTV service in Poland now has 9 thousand subscribers. Its total number of IPTV subscribers across all of its operations is 768 thousand, up from 229 thousand in the previous 12 months. In addition to France and Poland, France Telecom has IPTV operations in the UK, Spain, and in some of the French overseas territories.

France Telecom continues to do well. Between France Telecom, Free, and Neuf Cegetel there will be well over 3 million IPTV subscriber in France by the end of the year.

Shenick Launches IPTV Monitoring Capabilities

Shenick launched its IPTV network monitoring products earlier this month. I just had an interview with them today. Shenick's servicEye products provides the following functions for monitoring IPTV networks:

• servicEye provides monitoring capabilities at the head end of the network on pre and post IPTV encoding stages .
• Active probe functions with full reference video analysis for detailed video analysis. The active probe also provides a multi-application traffic injection capability that enables service providers to emulate and analyze network and application layer traffic.
• servicEye monitors both variable bit rate (VBR) and constant bit rate (CBR) video streams for SD, HD TV and picture-in-picture (PiP) TV with encrypted and non encrypted video payloads.

Shenick's systems are generally used in carrier IPTV labs to test IPTV systems. They are also used to prove out newly installed networks. These monitoring products take the next step and move Shenick into operational networks. Shenick stated that it expects that its products will be used in the headend to monitor video traffic at the source and at the access nodes to monitor video traffic as it enters the access network and is delivered to the viewer.

These kinds of products are key to the success of IPTV services. IPTV Service providers are starting to see churn due to dissatisfaction with video quality. These carriers have to be able to consistently deliver a high level video experience in order achieve the levels of success that they are looking for.

Korean Providers to Invest $15.8B in IPTV In 2008

The Broadcasting and Communications Commission in Korea stated that telecom firms there are to invest around $15.8 billion on IPTV services in 2008.

KT, the dominant telephone and broadband Internet service provider, alone plans to spend $13 billion, and LG Dacom and Hanarotelecom plan to spend $1.475 billion and $1.23 billion, respectively.

According to the report from the commission, the firms have said that they will spend $10.6 billion won on improving networks, $1.14 billion on platforms, $2.23 billion on set-top boxes and another $1.8 billion on purchasing content.

The Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute estimates IPTV will be a $5.4 billion market this year, meaning it will take a few years for the firms to start making any profits. Government agencies expect IPTV subscribers to reach 2 million this year and grow to 3.3 million by 2012.

According to the report from the commission, the firms have said that they will spend 1.06 trillion won on improving networks, 113.7 billion won on platforms, 223 billion won on set-top boxes and another 180 billion won on purchasing content. The Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute estimates IPTV will be a 540-billion won market this year, meaning it will take a few years for the firms to start making any profits. Government agencies expect IPTV subscribers to reach 2 million this year and grow to 3.3 million by 2012.

It looks like IPTV will have a big year in Korea in 2008. I am still a bit confused about which of these services are Internet over the top and which are typical walled garden Telco IPTV services. I would appreciate clarification from anybody on the scene.

France Telecom adds 107K IPTV Subscribers in 2Q08

France Telecom added 107 thousand IPTV subscribers in France, giving it a total of 1.389 million IPTV subscribers at the end of 2Q08. Its IPTV service is now available to 98 percent of the households in France.

It added 5 thousand IPTV subscribers in Poland, giving it a total of 54 thousand at the end of 2Q08. It added 17 thousand IPTV subscribers in other European countries, giving it a total of 92 thousand. Across all of its European operations, including France, it added 128 thousand IPTV subscribers ending 2Q08 with 1.535 million.

France Telecom continues with a very strong IPTV offering, especially in France. It should experience continuing growth at a similar rate.