IPTV Services Highly Concentrated

I just completed a short analysis based on the 4Q08 results that I have gathered so far. I have identified over 700 carriers globally with some level of IPTV activity. About 340 are in North America with 180 in Europe and 100 in Asia.

I estimate that there are more than 20 million IPTV subscribers globally and five carriers have more than one million IPTV subscribers each:

1. Free in France
2. Verizon in the U.S.
3. China Telecom
4. France Telecom
5. AT&T in the U.S.

These top 5 companies account for more than 40 percent of the total subscribers. The top 20 service providers account for 80 percent of the total and the top 50 account for 95 percent of the subscribers.

Telecom 2020 Blog

We have just stared a blog called Telecom 2020 View that discusses what services and networks will be in place after IP and Ethernet technologies have been adopted. This blog is a follow on to our report Telecom 2020: Transformation Strategies that covers this section in detail.

This new blog will include analysis of recent relevant news articles and a weekly column that will give our opinion on an important issue. We encourage comments so that the blog will include a diverse set of opinions.

TelecomView Publishes Report on Telecom 2020

TelecomView has released its report Telecom 2020: Transformation Strategies. This report dicusses the services and networks that will be available in 2020 after the adoption of IP and Ethernet technologies is complete. It discusses the impact on wireless and wireline networks as well as both consumer and business market segments.

This new report finds that this transformation will have major effects on the carriers and on the industry itself. It provides strategies that carriers and systems companies can use to be successful over this transition period.

You can get information on this report at our website. You can also order a free white paper that is based on this report.

500 IPTV Blog Posts

This is the 500th posting to this Telco IPTV blog since January 2007. I started this blog to provide news and analysis on the Telco IPTV services globally. My intent has been to provide the most significant news items and add comments that put each item into perspective.

I thank everybody who has supported this effort by reading this blog. The audience is wide. There were readers from more than 90 countries in July.

I would like to hear your thoughts on how I can improve this blog. Please submit a comment and let me know.

Bob Larribeau
San Francisco, California
August 26, 2008

U.S. Switched Access and ISDN Lines

If there are any old ISDN hands out there like myself you might like to see the charts I just published on my own website http://www.larribeau.com. They show that U.S. BRI and PRI lines seem to have stabilized over the last couple of years. BRI are declining slightly and PRI are now growing slightly. There was a big drop in 2002 through 2004, probably due the conversion of dialup to broadband, but since 2005, the number of PRI has grown.

TelecomView Report on U.S. Cable Strategies

TelecomView issued a report U.S. Cable: New Strategies for a Competitive World that discusses the options that the U.S. cable companies have for responding to the increased competition from satellite TV and the new IPTV services from Verizon, AT&T, and the other U.S. Telcos. It discusses the technical options that have to increase the capacity and efficiency of their cable plants. It also discusses the options that these companies have for entering and expanding their presence in other markets that are dominated by the Telcos today.

In particular the report discusses strategies for entering the wireless industry. This is the most important and most difficult problem that the U.S. cable companies face. We believe that the cable companies have to enter the wireless business to remain competitive with AT&T and Verizon.

There is a white paper that can be ordered from our website that describes the issues covered by the report.

TelecomView's Outlook for 2008

We have just published a free white paper Outlook for 2008 that discusses what we see in store in 2008 for the markets and technologies that we have been writing about, including:

• WiMAX and Broadband Wireless
• Mobile TV
• Telco IPTV

One of the basic trends that we have identified is the increasing importance of emerging markets. The developed countries have well developed networks and sets of services and growth there is plateauing. The emerging markets, including China and India, are experiencing high rates of growth and represent significant opportunities.

Network

TelecomView has just published a report called Network Strategies for TelcoTV services. We found that TelcoTV service providers are moving from simple broadcast services to more and more services that use on demand techniques.

The problem that these service providers face as they make this change is that it will fundamentally change the nature of the traffic on their networks. Broadcast channels are transported using multicast technologies that send only one copy of each channel down each link independent of the number of viewers.

On demand technologies require that a unique video stream be sent across the network to each viewer, which significantly increases the load on the network. In fact, the unicast load from video on demand, NPVR, and advanced advertising services will cause video traffic to quickly dominate these networks.

Our conclusion is that TelcoTV service providers will have to move their video traffic off of their IP and Ethernet networks and on to a non blocking optical distribution network to be able to support Telco TV services, especially with the addition of NPVR and advanced advertising services.

You can get information about this report by clicking here.

You can order a free white paper that discusses our findings (as well as other free white papers) by clicking here.

I have been concerned about the load that video traffic will put on the networks that support TelcoTV networks for a long time. The recent announcement of new optically based systems from Sun Microsystems showed a new approach that became the inspiration for this report.

Most TelcoTV service providers are not thinking about this today, but they will be before long.

TelcoTV vs. Internet TV

TelecomView has released its report called The Battle for Broadband TV: TelcoTV vs. Internet TV. This report discusses how Internet TV will affect TelcoTV. It identifies how the two services can cooperate with each other as well compete.

The report discusses how the two services will be positioned to serve the TVs in the home. It identifies fundamental advantages that the TelcoTV services have in doing this and gives strategies that telcos can use to strengthen their position.

You can find out more about this report at:

http://www.telecomview.info/acatalog/Broadband_TV.html

You can also order a free white paper on this subject at:

http://www.telecomview.info/acatalog/Publications_White_Papers_8.html

Let us know what you think.