Chunghwa Telecom at 435K IPTV Subscribers

Chunghwa Telecom of Taiwan ended 1Q08 with 435 thousand MOD IPTV subscribers. This is an increase of 41 thousand in the quarter and a growth of 52.7 percent over the previous 12 months.

Chunghwa's MOD IPTV service increased its video on demand library to 5,000 hours, an increase of 500 hours in the quarter. It also offers more than 60 broadcast chanels. It plans to add HD for the Beijing Olympics and Major League Baseball.

Chunghwa now has 634.5 thousand FTTx subscribers, which is up 97.7 thousand in the quarter and 391.3 thousand over the previous 12 months.

IPTV continues to grow steadily. It should easily add more subscribers in 2008 than the 150 thousand it added in 2007.

Deutsche Telekom Announces IPTV Appplication Winners

Deutsche Telekom announce the ten semifinalists in its IPTV applications contest. Each of these semifinalists will win 50 thousand euros. These ten semifinalists will develop prototypes. The top three of these will then be selected for the final round. Each of these three finalists will win 100 thousand euros each. The three finalists will develop their applications onto the Deutsche Telekom platform. A winner will be selected from these three and will receive 200 thousand euros.

This is a great concept to stimulate application development and to generate new, creative applications. It would be great if other large IPTV providers in other regions would create similar programs.

Verizon at 1.2M IPTV Subscribers

Verizon added 263 thousand IPTV subscribers in 1Q08 ending with a total of 1.206 million. It also ended the quarter with 1.803 million FiOS Internet subscribers, adding 262 thousand in the quarter. Verizon can now offer FiOS TV to 82 percent of the 7.9 million homes that the service passes. It believes that it is on track to attain its goal of 25 percent FiOS TV penetration and 35 to 40 percent FiOS Internet penetration.

Verizon's FiOS TV FTTH IPTV service continues to grow strongly. For the first time it added more IPTV subscribers during the quarter than Internet subscribers. This indicates that it is successfully upselling TV to Internet customers as the FiOS TV service becomes available.

Telia Sonera at 407K IPTV Subscribers

Telia Sonera ended 1Q08 with 407 thousand IPTV subscribers. This is an increase of 29 thousand in 4Q08 and an increase of 27 thousand in 1Q08 and 286 thousand in the previous 12 months. The country by country results include:

• Sweden ended with 318 thousand IPTV subscribers in increase of 14 thousand in 1Q08 and 236 thousand in the previous 12 months.
• Norway ended with 4 thousand IPTV subscribers in increase of 2 thousand in 1Q08 and 4 thousand in the previous 12 months.
• Lithuania ended with 25 thousand IPTV subscribers in increase of 7 thousand in 1Q08 and 16 thousand in the previous 12 months.
• Estonia ended with 60 thousand IPTV subscribers in increase of 6 thousand in 1Q08 and 30 thousand in the previous 12 months.

Telia Sonera had no IPTV subscribers in Finland or Denmark.

Telia Sonera's subscriber growth slowed significantly in 1Q08, especially in Sweden. It has built up a significant subscriber base in both Lithuania and Estonia.

KT has 567K IPTV Subscribers

Korea Telecom ended March 2008 with 567,230 IPTV subscribers, which is an increase of 528,465 since the end of March 2007. Its broadband service grew by 177,446 subscribers from March 2007 to March 2008 ending with a total of 6,627,175 subscribers.

Also, a Hanaro spokesman stated that it now has 680 thousand IPTV subscribers.

KT's IPTV service grew rapidly in the last 12 months. It appears that this accelerating rate of growth should continue over the next 12 months.

One reader of this blog confirmed that KT's and Hanaro's services are Telco IPTV services. I am more comfortable about this statement relative to KT than Hanaro at this point, but my mind is open. I would appreciate more comments from readers on the scene.

Qwest's FTTN Services

Qwest in the U.S. announced two new data services for its VDSL FTTN roll out:

• 12 Mbps at $49.99 per month
• 20 Mbps at $99.99 per month

The two new services will be offered in 23 markets across 10 states.

Qwest is using VDSL to offer a high speed service without IPTV. The 12 Mbps is high enough to easily support SD over the top Internet TV, and the 20 Mbps will support HD over the top Internet TV. Qwest should become a real testing ground for over the top Internet TV services. It will be interesting to see what develops from this.

KDDI at 710K FTTH Subscribers

KDDI announced that it added 118 thousand FTTH subscribers in its fiscal year ending in March 2008 giving a total of 710 thousand. It missed its previous target of 900 thousand FTTH subscribers by a wide margin. Its target for March 2008 is 1.14 million subscribers.

KDDI stated that its FTTH ARPU was quite flat at $45 per month. It also stated that it is under significant margin pressure where it uses unbundled NTT fiber loops. In this case its gross margin is 28 percent, with 72 percent going to NTT. It believes that it will have to build out its own infrastructure to a greater expense to improve its business case.

It is not clear why KDDI will achieve its objective for FTTH subscriber growth over the next 12 months when it missed so badly in the last 12 months.

KDDI does not disclose its number of IPTV subscribers. My estimate is that that they have somewhat more that 100 thousand.