Global IPTV Subscribers Reaches 21.8M

The Broadband Forum made a press release based on numbers from Point Topic that stated that there were 21.8 million IPTV subscribers at the end of 2008. This broke down by region as follows:

Region 2007 Q4 2008 Q4
Western Europe 7,045,860 10,388,000
North America 1,774,671 3,835,544
South & East Asia 1,840,000 3,615,000
Asia-Pacific 2,199,828 3,082,182
Eastern Europe 465,223 884,466
Latin America 8,991 21,495
Middle East & Africa 10,000 10,000
Global Total 13,344,573 21,836,687

These numbers show that IPTV subscribers have stopped doubling each year globally. The more mature markets are singing a significant fall off in growth rates.

Broadband Forum Tackles IPTV

The Broadband Forum, formerly the DSL Forum, released BroadbandSuite 3.0, which provides specifications for triple play delivered via GPON and bonded DSL over a QoS-enabled Ethernet architecture, and remote management beyond the gateway to address video and storage
devices. BroadbandSuite 2.0, released in 2007, provided a roadmap for triple-play access via ADSL-2+.

The Broadband Forum has been the leader in developing useful standards for broadband networks. Its TR-069 specification that BroadbandSuite 3.0 is based on is being broadly accepted as the primary way to manage devices on home networks.