ATT 3 Screen Masters Golf Tournament Coverage

ATT is providing coverage of the 2009 Masters Golf Tournament over its U-verse IPTV service, to the PC, and to mobile phones. Live content to all three screens includes:

• Par 3 Contest, which featured a live feed from the contest on Wednesday, April 8.
• Masters Extra, which gives AT&T viewers one hour of coverage before cable and network broadcast coverage begins.
• Amen Corner Live, which features live coverage of the 11th, 12th and 13th holes.
  15th/16th Live, which features live coverage of the 15th and 16th holes.

On demand coverage includes:

• Masters Moments, featuring a series of 24 vignettes from past Tournaments available to U-Verse and PC viewers.
• Multiple Player Interviews, offered daily via U-verse TV VOD, the PC, and mobile video.
• Masters TV, including daily previews and recaps available via to the PC and mobile video.

This is a nice set of 3 screen programming. It does show the complexity of making this kind of offering. Consequently, compelling 3 screen programming will continue to be limited to these special events quite a while.

Belgacom Considering New IPTV Middleware

Light Reading published an article saying that Belgacom is considering replacing its Nokia Siemens middleware. Light Reading thinks that Microsoft is the leading contender. The other major vendors supporting Microsoft are Arris/C-Cor for video on demand, Amino for set-top boxes, and Verimatrix for content security.

The Nokia Siemens middleware came from its acquisition of Myrio. Myrio's middleware was originally designed for the small U.S. independent telcos.

This is an interesting situation. It does not appear that Nokia Siemens has made the investment in the Myrio middleware to allow it to scale to meet Belgacom's needs and to support the next generation of interactive applications.

Microsoft's Mediaroom is an obvious candidate. I expect that Alcatel-Lucent will use its strong relationship with Belgacom to push the MyView middleware that it acquired from Telefonica. Thomson's middleware that is used by France Telecom should be another strong candidate.

It will be bad news for Arris/C-Cor, Amino, and Verimatrix if Belgacom its replaces Nokia Siemens middleware.

Liberty Global Interview

Light Reading has published an interview with Liberty Global that discusses the advantages of cable over IPTV in the European context. It sees that DOCSIS 3.0 gives it a large advantage over ADSL technology along with its long experience delivering video content.

These are good points but IPTV is giving cable a real run for its money in countries such as France and Belgium. IPTV is in a much stronger position in Europe than it is in most parts of the U.S.

Chunghwa Telecom Added 85K Subscribers in 4Q08

Chunghwa Telecom of Taiwan added 85,000 IPTV subscribers in 4Q08, ending the quarter with 676,000 subscribers. It came quite close to meeting its revised target of 700,000 IPTV subscribers at the end of 2008. It reported that then number of subscribers to its Golden TV premium package grew from 12,804 at the end of 2007 to 117,822 at the end of 2008.

Chunghwa added 123.9 fiber subscribers giving it a total of 1,069,700 fiber subscribers at the end of 2008. It provides fibers services to 16,600 buildings, which it said represents 91 percent market share among all operators. The company expects that it will have more fiber than ADSL subscribers in 2011.

Chunghwa continues to make steady progress with both its IPTV and fiber services.

Impact of the Lack of IPTV Standards

Light Reading published an article describing the discussion at an IPTV World Forum panel discussion. The panelists said that the lack of IPTV standards is holding back investment in IPTV technology. They also said that there are tremendous opportunities for interactive advertising opportunities in IPTV if the industry would broadly support open standards.

This is an interesting perspective. The key is the middleware software, which is quite fragmented. Microsoft, Thomson, Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Siemens, Cascade, and Minerva all have a significant share of this market. There is no commonality between them which has created a fragmented market. It is hard to see how a single market based on open standards will be created out of this. This may well be the Achilles heel that will cause over the to Internet delivered TV predominate in the end.

City Telecom at 170K IPTV Subscribers

City Telecom who operates the Hong Kong Broadband service ended February 2008 with 170,000 IPTV subscribers. This is an increase of 14,000 subscribers over the previous six months. It also had 350,000 broadband subscribers, and increase of 34,000 over the same period.

City Telecom is continuing to increase its IPTV base but still has a penetration rate less than 50 percent.

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.