VIEWERS’ CHOICE: IPTV will provide television programmes via the Net

Quick, what will you do if your fixed line phone company offers you a phone connection, a video conference facility and your favourite TV channels bundled with 150 films a month? You’ll snap up the offer in double quick time, especially if the price is affordable. The telephone company will charge you for all these services, apart from billing you for your phone calls.

India’s television viewers will soon be offered all these and more, thanks to the brave new world of Internet protocol television (IP-TV) that several telecommunications companies (Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL), Bharti Televentures, Tata Teleservices, Relia-nce Communications, to name a few) are about to unveil in the months ahead.

IPTV will change the way you view television. Best of all, you can dump your multiple service providers ? the cablewallah, broadband supplier and the landline phone company ? in favour of a single entity that will supply you with all three services.

What precisely is IPTV? It’s a real time broadcasting system for delivering TV programmes to households via a broadband connection using Internet protocols or systems. Typically, IPTV offers what’s technically called “triple play” ? that is, video on demand (VOD), voice over IP (VOIP) or digital phone services, and web access.

However, its single biggest advantage is that it provides two-way communication for interactive television, which is not the case with direct-to-home (DTH) services. “In IPTV, you can zoom in on an action on the screen and change the language or sound track of what you are viewing. There is no real-time interactivity in DTH,” technology consultant K.V. Seshasayee explains. Adds Rajesh Sawhney, president, Reliance Entertainment: “It’s like using the Internet. Technically speaking, I could deliver 100,000 TV channels to you.”

According to Amit Kumar, director of Time Broadband, a small Indian company that’s partnering MTNL in launching IPTV, each family member could have a log-on password. “So if children log on, they will get a display of programmes or channels relevant to them,” he says.

To receive IPTV, your television set has to be hooked to a set top box that decodes the IP video into standard signals. When a modem is added to the set top box, it allows you to access the Internet on a personal computer or TV screen, to play games (you can play only simple games if you subscribe to DTH and cable TV) and shop online. Thanks to the broadband connection, you can even receive email alerts while watching TV.

IPTV also makes “timeshift” possible ? viewers can choose their own prime time. “Even if the programme is over, a viewer can ask for it from the server. The facility is called network personal video recorder,” explains Kumar. “The recording is done on the network. You can book space on the network ? it is your own world in the sky,” he adds.

Worldwide, trials are on for a new technology called “play shift” as well. This will allow the IPTV service company, for instance, to deliver your favourite football match, when you want and where you want. “That is, if you are not at home, the match could be delivered to your laptop or your mobile phone,” says Sawhney. Last but not least, IPTV is relatively inexpensive because three services ? telephony, TV programmes and broadband ? are bundled. MTNL, for example, may launch its basic service for Rs 399 a month.

Lured by the attractions of offering such exciting services, virtually every telecom company is leaping into the IPTV business. MTNL and Time Broadband will be launching IPTV services in Delhi and Mumbai. Along with Hewlett Packard, Time Broadband is successfully pushing TV channels through MTNL telephone lines into the homes of a few hundred government servants in the capital.

Bharti Televentures is conducting similar trials in Gurgaon in partnership with the California-based UT Starcom. Reliance’s Sawhney too acknowledges: “We wish to roll out the service for the mass market and not just in a few cities. Our trials are on.”

For telecom companies, IPTV offers an opportunity to augment their revenues. Secondly, the world is moving towards digital technology and “IPTV is the way to go”, feels Alok Shende, analyst at consultancy firm Frost & Sullivan. Thirdly, in the Asia Pacific region IPTV is expected to have 20 million subscribers by 2009. The Shanghai Media Group (SMG) in China has already roped in 80,000 subscribers.

Still, for IPTV to catch on in India, some issues need to be sorted out first. Among them:

• The state-owned MTNL and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) control access to consumer homes through their fixed line phone copper wires. But they are not ready to share this with private companies, although the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, the industry’s regulator, has recommended they do so.

• Ashok Mansukhani, executive director of Hinduja TMT, the Hinduja group company, makes another point. “It remains to be seen whether broadcasters will allow hard disk storage, allowing convenience of watching programmes when you choose to do so,” he says.

• IPTV will spread slowly because the physical infrastructure has to be laid on the ground. “While IPTV will grow city-wise, DTH needs just one satellite to offer the service anywhere in the country,” crows a DTH company executive.

• Jagjit Singh Kohli, CEO, Siticable, the Zee group’s cable TV distribution arm, contends that IPTV can never replace cable TV. Mansukhani broadly agrees: “By 2015, of the expanded TV home market, 85 per cent will be cable, 10 per cent DTH and five per cent IPTV. So the total number of cable TV subscribers will not drop.”

• Yet Sawhney may have a point when he says that since big companies are jumping into the IPTV market the “quality of service will improve”. Clearly, the customer will be spoilt for choice.

What you can do with IPTV

• Play games on your TV screen
• Shop online
• Video conferencing
• Zoom in on the action on the screen, change language or the sound track
• Determine who in the family gets to see what — each family member can have a log on password
• Ask the server for programmes that have already been screened