Investors' Corner - MRG Multimedia Research Group Inc.

In Korea, IPTV Service Providers have been struggling with acquiring content and licensing content with television networks.

Korea’s terrestrial broadcasting stations — KBS, MBC and SBS — have not agreed over the price for licensing content for their programs by the three IPTV Operators — KT, SK Broadband and LG Dacom.

However, the broadcasters have decided to offer their programming now and negotiate prices at a later date. According to sources, broadcasters and IPTV Service Providers have spent months negotiating and still remain far apart over prices.

Microsoft's Virtualization—Will It Make Mediaroom More Efficient?
June 2009

Microsoft announced an upgrade to its Mediaroom IPTV platform, offering “virtualization support” which “can deliver up to a sixfold reduction in the number of physical servers required to support a full-featured IPTV service.”

Microsoft said that with virtualization support, Service Providers can significantly reduce hardware and management costs and decrease time-to-market for Mediaroom customers by up to three weeks.

Mediaroom with virtualization is targeting the smaller IPTV Operators, or those looking to extend into new markets in low-density communities. Although virtualization allows for a reduction in servers, Microsoft said it is still the full-powered Mediaroom IPTV solution with all the features intact.

Microsoft has long been criticized for requiring more servers than competitive IPTV solutions, which can cost Service Providers significantly more in CapEx costs plus added complexity. With virtualization Service Providers can operate a Mediaroom-powered TV service for up to 30,000 subscriber homes per market using fewer than 10 physical servers. Without virtualization, the same deployment required nearly 60 servers.

Service Providers can mix both virtualized and dedicated servers, with deployments over 30,000 and still get efficiency benefits. One customer testing virtualization in the U.S. is Telco Reservation Telephone Cooperative in North Dakota. It added virtualization support and was able to take advantage of Microsoft’s Mediaroom, making it one of the first small Telcos to use Mediaroom.

To power virtualization in Mediaroom, Microsoft is using its Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V server virtualization technology. It enables multiple virtual servers to be hosted on the same physical server. In order to achieve efficiency, virtual servers share the physical server’s resources, such as memory, disk access and CPU cycles.

Microsoft said that there would be no changes to its software licensing model for virtualization support.

With a new efficient Mediaroom platform, Microsoft is clearly targeting smaller Operators and those
looking to expand into smaller geographic regions. For Service Providers, being able to afford to use Microsoft’s Mediaroom in their smaller Operations may be an attractive option. Once again, Microsoft is using its marketing muscle to go after new market opportunities. With virtualization support, Mediaroom managers hope to attract Tier-2 and Tier-3 Operators in the U.S., as well as growing regions like those in Eastern Europe and Latin America. Since Microsoft already has a significant group of large Tier-1 Telcos around the world using Mediaroom; adding smaller Telcos can greatly enhance Microsoft’s middleware footprint. Competitive middleware companies will now be forced to reply to this new challenge.

U.S. Supreme Court Will Not Hear Arguments in the Case of Whether Cablevision's Network PVR Violates Copyright Laws
June 2009

The U.S. Supreme Court decided not to hear arguments in the case of whether Cablevision’s network PVR violates copyright laws. That means that the lower court ruling stands, and Cablevision won its battle against Hollywood studios and television networks, and it can begin offering its remote storage DVR system legally. According to Cablevision, it is proceeding with plans to offer the network PVR service starting this summer. “This is a tremendous victory,” said Tom Rutledge, Cablevision’s Chief Operating Officer, in a statement. “At the same time, we are mindful of the potential implications for ad skipping and the concerns this has raised in the programming community.”

Although nPVRs are now legal, it may take months before the Cable or IPTV Operators actually get past the trial stage and customers finally start using them and seeing the advantages. Other Operators will undoubtedly unveil their own network PVR service so the real winners will be TV viewers. However, Satellite TV Operators will not benefit from the decision since they don’t have an adequate backchannel to support network PVR services. As Cable and IPTV Operators begin offering nPVR services, they must start to look at how to increase revenues while creating a satisfying experience for subscribers. In addition, they must keep costs down, since more servers and network management will be needed to make up for the lack of hard drives in set-tops.

BSNL To Invest In Wireless Broadband, 3G, IPTV, WiMax and Mobile Services
June 2009

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) said it is planning to invest a sum of US$300 million in 2009
to 2010 in order to expand wireless Broadband, 3G, IPTV, WiMAX and mobile services. In addition, BSNL launched IPTV to customers in Puducherry, India under the brand name “MyWay.” As part of a promotional push, MyWay is being offered free to BSNL Broadband customers for three months.

Avail Media TVN
May 2009

Content aggregator Avail Media said it was merging with TVN, a VOD Provider. Avail said that this will allow them to offer a complete IPTV content package, with linear channels, as well as VOD. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the deal should close quickly, said executives from both companies.

One of the investors in the merger is the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative (NRTC), which already is working with Avail to secure programming rights. NRTC’s investment made it a major shareholder in the combined company and gave them a seat on their board of directors. The NRTC said it made the investment to help its Telco members benefit from these new services.

TalkTalk Buys Tiscali
May 2009

TalkTalk, the wholly owned subsidiary of Carphone Warehouse, acquired Tiscali UK for £236 million (US$376 million) in cash.

TalkTalk acquired 1.45 million Tiscali Broadband customers in the U.K, and will have a total of 4.25
million Broadband homes.

That would make Tiscali the second largest Broadband Provider in the U.K., BT which has 4.8 million customers.

Previously, BSkyB had reportedly offered Tiscali about £450 million (US$717 million), however, negotiations broke down. The acquisition from TalkTalk, is almost half of BSkyB’s asking price, which might make this a desperate deal for Tiscali.

Tiscali’s last published separate U.K. IPTV subscriber numbers in 3Q/2007, when it had 36,000. In the last few months, Tiscali has expanded into London including Newcastle, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Leeds, Sheffield and Liverpool.

Internet Video News
May 2009

Time Warner Cable said it is readying its “TV Everywhere” offering that will allow subscribers to access all of their TV and premium content from the Internet. The Cable company said that the service may be ready in the 3rd or 4th quarter of this year. Time Warner execs said that the service needs authentication software to verify that an online viewer is a subscriber, which many Cable companies already have. Disney’s CEO said that they are having trouble accepting this new concept of TV anywhere. However, it’s clear that other Cable companies are using the same strategy. Of content partners, only the broadcast networks seem to have more of a problem with offering shows over the Internet (or “OTT”), while Cable networks seem to be more receptive. If the Cable offerings gain early acceptance, expect U.S. Telco SPs to do the same in 2009-2010. (1)

Hulu said it will be expanding internationally in the next few months. Currently, Hulu, the NBC-Fox- Disney online TV site, is only available in the U.S. and is already the number 2 video site in the world, second only to YouTube. Hulu executives have been meeting with content owners around the world to ensure content deals are reached before Hulu’s international launch.

NeuLion launched iTVRSN, an Internet TV network for Romanian audiences in North America. The service delivers video programming over the public Internet, delivered to a set-top box service. The Service, iTVRSN will include 25 Romanian television channels, with programs that have exclusive distribution rights outside Romania. The company said there are 1.2 million Romanian Americans presently living in North America.

SecureMedia announced that TVBLOB’s Internet video service is protected by SecureMedia’s Encryptonite ONE System CA/DRM system. TVBLOB’s set-top, manufactured by Telsey, includes a DVB receiver, double tuner and HD DVR, also includes OTT video and Internet applications. That includes services like YouTube, or even BitTorrent. (2)

Set-top box company Entone said that it was teaming with Internet TV Provider VUDU to bring its 14,000 title VOD library for an IPTV and over-the-top (OTT) video service.

(1) For more information about the emerging OTT markets and what it means to Operators, see MRG’s new OTT Report, published in June, 2009.

(2) For more information about hybrid STBs, see MRG’s new report Hybrid IPTV Set-top Boxes Global Market Analysis & Strategy Critique: 2009-2012 Report, at www.mrgco.com/iptv/hstb09.html, published June 2009.

Verizon and AT&T Gain 583K Subs in 1Q/2009
April 2009

Verizon said that it added 299,000 subscribers for its FiOS TV service and now has 2.2 million total subscribers. In the 4th quarter of 2008, Verizon added 303,000 FiOS TV subscribers so there was a slight decrease from the previous quarter.

As a result, Verizon is now the 7th largest pay-TV company in the U.S. Its FiOS TV penetration is 22.9%, and it now passes 9.7 million homes.

Verizon reported US$1.3 billion in revenues from broadband and video services while net profit was up 5.3% against a year ago, as Verizon added 1.3 million new wireless customers. Verizon also added 298,000 fiber Internet customers to reach 2.8 million.

AT&T reported a net addition of 284,000 U-verse TV subscribers during the first quarter of 2009. AT&T now has 1.3 million U-verse subscribers. In other financial news, AT&T reported a net profit of US$3.2 billion, which was 9% lower than a year ago. Revenue for the first quarter was US$30.57 billion, which is less than 1% compared to a year ago.

Year over year, AT&T has grown subscribers from 379,000 to 1,329,000, which comes out to a 251% growth rate. By contrast, Verizon has gone from 1.2 million to 2.2 million, which is only an 84% growth rate.

Move Networks Acquired Inuk Networks
April 2009

Move Networks announced that it acquired Inuk Networks, a U.K.-based provider of virtual set-top box software for PCs. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Move Networks provides the streaming technology and delivery for ABC, Fox, the CW and other major television broadcasters.

Analyst Comment: This is an event which is likely to significantly impact the North American IPTV market by enabling Operators to expand their normal IPTV service to PCs and laptops in the household over the broadband network, while not compromising content security or quality. If Inuk works as advertised, Operators are expected to use the “virtual STB” as a “loyalty enhancer” or a modest revenue generator that needs no extra truck roll for the upgrade. Move Networks’ CEO said that they will likely roll out a virtual STB project within 90 days.

Comcast's Big Internet Video Play
April 2009

Comcast said it will make its Cable TV content available to subscribers over the Internet through its Fancast.com site. Its new on-demand Internet video service will allow Comcast subscribers to sign in with a username and password, then access any standard or premium Cable content from their subscription.

FTTH Grows Worldwide
March 2009

The number of countries with a high FTTH penetration has almost doubled in the past 18 months, according to the FTTH Council.

The organization tracks the level of FTTH market penetration for countries that have more than one percent of households connected to fiber and found that 20 countries met this threshold, up from 14 in July 2008 and 11 in July 2007.

The FTTH Council says that the growth comes from the expansion of fiber deployments in several European countries. In all, total European fiber deployments are at 2 million homes, however, the region with the most FTTH market penetration is Asia. Currently, South Korea leads the way with 44% of the market, Hong Kong was at 28% and Japan was close behind at 27%. In terms of sheer number of fiber connected homes, Japan was on top with 13.2 million, followed by the United States 6.05 million and China 5.96 million.

Zillion TV Steps Into the Crowded OTT Space
March 2009

Yet another OTT (Over-the-Top Internet Video) service has rolled out in early March, this one initially targeted at U.S. markets and subsequently at European and Asian markets. Intended to work mostly with Telcos and ISPs, the new “free” service(1) uses advanced user interface design and opt-in advertising-based viewing to create a primarily “pull” model to get people the on-demand programming they want. If people opt-in to watch a program for free, they’ll also see some ads. If consumers don’t want ads, they can pay a rental fee just like with its competition Apple TV, VUDU, Hulu and others. What’s different about Zillion TV is the viewer can pick a category of ads (like garden supplies, high mileage automobiles, travel packages to France, etc.) as a means to personalize them. What also is very different is the user interface and the remote control.

Comprised of a remote control and a slim set-top box (STB), Zillion TV uses UI technology from Hillcrest Labs, whose motion-based technology replaces the old scroll-up/down-on-a-matrix technique. To navigate, Zillion TV uses a wireless point-and-click remote control that is far more intuitive to use than the traditional matrix EPGs and remotes. The real key to the success of this service is that it provides ready access to about 15,000 titles, provides robust security for content protection, contains elements of QOS to maintain quality in its streaming delivery, enjoys
strong support from the major studios like Disney-ABC, Sony, and others, and generates both ad and PPV revenue.

Analyst Comment: MRG has stated before (including in the Widgets article in the January 2009 issue) that OTT services will need to function in partnerships with established IPTV and/or Cable Operators, rather than trying to compete with them, if they are to deliver a quality service. Although Zillion TV has its own QoS elements that it can exercise, we believe that as a standalone, it would quickly run afoul with the local Operator, despite what the network neutrality mavens may say in favor or against the Zillion TV approach. Because this is strictly an on-demand service, it is highly likely that some Operators may choose to use this as part of a hybrid service (e.g., using OTT for the on-demand service and digital terrestrial or satellite for free off air programming), as is becoming more popular in Europe today. While Zillion has a chance to penetrate an already crowded field, much of its success will ride on the quality and breadth of its ongoing content offerings, and on the success of its advertising offerings.

News Corp and Permira Completed Buyout of NDS
February 2009

News Corp completed its buyout of content protection and STB software company NDS with U.K. private equity firm Permira for US$3.7 billion. That means that NDS is now private, with News Corp owning 49 percent and Permira with 51 percent ownership. After the sale, NDS was delisted from trading on NASDAQ. CEO, Abe Peled, said in a statement that the company needs to be flexible and have the “strategic agility” to make any kinds of deals. The thinking was that NDS’ ownership by News Corp. was seen as less favorable when making deals with other Pay TV Operators. Peled said that NDS can better “capitalize on these new opportunities with a more independent structure and the expertise of Permira.”

U.S. Gets $7 Billion Broadband Stimulus
February 2009

In February, President Barack Obama signed into law a US$787 billion economic stimulus package, which includes US$7 billion for broadband infrastructure. The primary goal of the broadband stimulus package seems to be promoting broadband access in rural areas where there is little existing broadband access.

Will the broadband stimulus package help create jobs? Most analysts agree that it won’t help to create many during the construction and building phase. However, most of the benefits will be seen after the various broadband projects are completed. It should lead to more jobs, more broadband usage, and investment due to broadband.

Bharti Airtel Launches IPTV in India
February 2009

In January, Indian Telco Bharti Airtel launched its commercial IPTV service “Digital TV.” Although Bharti also has a DTH service, officials said that IPTV would focus more on urban professionals, while DTH would be more mass market. The IPTV service is currently available in the state of Delhi, however, seven additional cities (including Mumbai and Bangalore) are planned in the future.

The IPTV triple-play service costs Rs999 per month (US$20.45) for the premium package with 135 TV channels, 256Kbps unlimited broadband Internet and a landline connection. The “Combo pack” is Rs599 per month (US$12.25) with 117 channels, a 2.5GB monthly download limit and no landline connection.

The service includes the ability to order pizzas for home delivery from the TV, as well as movie ticket ordering. In addition, the service includes time-shift TV, which lets viewers watch shows from the previous 7 days.

Orders For Communications Gear Up
January 2009

Orders for manufactured goods made to last for three years or longer fell less than most economists had expected in November. Orders for high-technology equipment were mixed based on the results for the three subcategories below, with the communications sector the only one to record a gain in both orders and shipments from both the month and year before. Inventories were mostly higher. (Figures are seasonally adjusted and in billions of dollars.)

It’s good to know that our sector continues to show gains in these challenging economic times.

Swisscom Investment in Firecomms
January 2009

Swisscom invested US$5 million in Firecomms, the maker of plastic optical fiber(POF), which seeks to rival powerlines, coax, copper wire and telephone wire as home networking technologies.

Analyst Comment: 8 Reasons Why Standalone Internet TV Will Not Succeed
January 2009

Here are 8 reasons to believe Internet TV sets will not be commonplace at least for 5-10 years:

• It takes 8 years on average to replace the main TV in the living room, making it unlikely that Internet TVs (with hard drives and added technology) will be economical replacement products anytime soon.

• Internet TVs are already priced as high end models, putting them out of reach for the average households.

• The clutter factor of Internet TV may drive people away, back to managed services that avoid random (pop-up) ads and maintain quality.

• Lack of universal standards may inhibit worldwide developments; much rides on Yahoo and how easily it can enter International markets.

• Browsers on Internet TV sets cannot rely on a keyboard(1); since widgets would need to work seamlessly with the remote control, and with the EPG of the local IPTV or Cable or Satellite Operators, many custom interfaces would be necessary.

• There will soon be a lot of competition available from hybrid STBs that will discourage people from using a separate Internet TV service like the Widget Channel.

• There already is significant competition from OTT Internet STBs like VUDU, Roku, Apple TV, Blockbuster/MediaPoint(2) and Xbox which can provide HD and SD movie services, sports events and the like.

2008

AT&T Now Has Over 1 Million Subscribers
December 2008

AT&T said it now has over 1 million subscribers for its U-verse service. It expects to have about 17 million homes passed by the end of 2008. By the beginning of 2009, AT&T said it is looking to offer more than 100 linear HD channels. It is also looking to add a third HD stream into the home by conducting tests in its labs.

Worldwide Broadband Market Climbs 19%
December 2008

According to Point Topic, there are 398.4 million broadband subscribers worldwide as of the 3Q/2008. After a somewhat slow second quarter (14 million new subs), the third quarter had 15.9 million net additions. The quarterly growth rate was just 4%, however yearly growth was 19%.

Looking at specific regions, Western Europe has the largest share of worldwide broadband subscribers at 25.8%. South, East Asia has 22.7% and North America is third with 22%.

Overall quarterly growth in all regions was positive except for some slowdown in two sub-regions: Asia Pacific fell by .37% and the Middle East/Africa went down by .45%. Quarterly growth rates for North America, Western Europe and SE Asia were low (under 3% each), but that's probably because broadband penetration is already high and there's less room for broadband growth. The region with the highest quarterly growth rate was Latin America (8.3%), followed by SE Asia (7.4%) and Eastern Europe (6.9%).

In terms of annual growth, Indonesia is leading with 178% or about 384,000 net additions in the last 12 months. Rounding out the top five are India, Belarus, Greece and the Philippines.

Orange France Telecom Looking to Develop an Application Store
December 2008

According to media reports, Orange France Telecom is looking to develop an application store much like iTunes, for content on devices like TV, PCs and mobile phones. France Telecom held a partner meeting in Florida, U.S., in order to develop the plan, which would likely not be fully developed for another year or two.

VUDU Opening Up Its Platform to Outside Developers
December 2008

VUDU announced that it was opening up its platform to outside developers to help bring Web content to the TV screen. VUDU created some initial applications, like games, Flickr, Picasa and YouTube, that are currently available to all VUDU customers.

Amino Acquires Tilgin's STB Division
November 2008

In November, set-top box maker Amino Communications acquired Tilgin’s IPTV STB division for US$3.7 million. Tilgin is keeping its home gateway business, but is selling off its range of “Mood” IPTV set-top boxes.

Roy Kirsopp, VP & General Manager at Amino, said that Tilgin’s product line will enhance the company’s portfolio and bring access to new middleware solution, including Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks. The combined assets of both Tilgin and Amino will expand their overall market share as well. However, Tilgin’s main IPTV customer, Belgacom, recently switched over to Motorola’s STBs instead.

Kirsopp said that the acquisition will help Amino grow not just its STB line, but beyond. “Clearly it’s an STB play, but what we saw in Tilgin is…a strong technology base that’s complementary to what we do,” he said. “We’re going to take the best of Amino and the best of Tilgin and merge them together to produce significantly better products.” Beyond the STB world is the future of IP networks, with addressable advertising, Over-the-Top Internet content, convergence applications and more.

TiVo Made a Deal With Netflix
November 2008

TiVo made a deal with Netflix to allow TiVo users to download movies and TV shows from Netflix. TiVo already has a similar deal with Amazon’s video service, which means that TiVo is becoming a de facto all-in-one streaming box into the home. This means users won’t need to buy a separate Roku box (US$99), and can just use their existing TiVo set-tops. TiVo deserves attention over the next 12-18 months regarding whether it can break into the VOD market with a significant revenue increase.

Logitech Acquires SightSpeed
November 2008

Logitech announced it was acquiring video communications company SightSpeed for US$30 million. Logitech already sells Webcams and other video-related products, so the SightSpeed acquisition would allow an even further push into real-time video communications.

IPTV Tops Cable in Customer Satisfaction
October 2008

Another bit of good news for AT&T and Verizon comes from a customer satisfaction survey by J.D. Power and Associates. Their annual report found that AT&T and Verizon beat U.S. Cable companies for customer satisfaction.

The study measures customer satisfaction with Cable, Satellite and Internet protocol (IPTV) television providers in four regional segments: North Central, East, West and South. Within each segment, five factors are measured to determine overall customer satisfaction: performance and reliability; customer service; cost of service; billing; and offerings and promotions. This is the first time that J.D. Power has included the IPTV Providers alongside Cable.

Overall, AT&T U-verse ranked highest in the North Central, West and South regions. In the East region, Verizon ranked highest with a score of 677. Apparently AT&T and Verizon ranked particularly well in promotions, specifically with their bundled pricing options. They also scored well in performance and reliability factor, especially with reception clarity.

Shifts in MRG Market Leader Report
October 2008

MRG announces new leaders in the global IPTV Market Leaders Report — August 2008, which tracks the top 100 IPTV vendors in 24 regional subsegments based on the installed base of 6 video systems products in over 660 IPTV Operations. Continuing growth of orders are reflected by increased deployments of IPTV products in Europe, Asia, Rest of World, and even in North America.

The merger and acquisitions activity continues with news from Viaccess' purchase of Orca and Espial's acquisition of Kasenna, leaving ripples of change throughout the Middleware, Video-on-Demand (VOD) and Content Protection/Digital Rights Management sectors. For the first time, Microsoft has moved upward to third position globally in Middleware, VOD and Content Protection, as other Middleware and VOD providers brace for further rolling swells from the software giant. Verimatrix again scores in the top 5 vendors in all 4 regions and as Number One globally in Content Protection/Digital Rights Management.

In VOD, Thomson advances to Number One globally for the first time, and Alcatel-Lucent remains Number One in Middleware. In STBs (set-top boxes), Motorola remains the global leader while competitors Sagem, Cisco and Amino are showing the ability to close the gap in front of them.

"Some IPTV market segments are more volatile thanothers and will certainly see some changes in the future," says Jose Alvear, MRG Analyst. "However, one thing is certain, the IPTV market is still going strong. Not only are subscriber numbers rising, but new Operators are still in the midst of deploying IPTV systems all around the world."

Companies like Ericsson, Thomson, NEC, Nortel and Cisco are expected to create strong "turn-key" alliances with various companies on a regional and local basis, to compete with the strong regional successes of companies like UTStarcom and ZTE.

"Turn-key system strategies on a regional and even a local basis mark a new era in vendor strategies that help IPTV Operators control and accelerate early deployment," says Gary Schultz, President, MRG, Inc.

The price of this 84-page (indexed) report is $3,995 USD for a printed copy, and $5,200 USD for a PDF format Departmental License. It is free for subscribers to the IPTV Tracking Service.

Ericsson Goes IMS with Sonaecom
September 2008

Ericsson and its TANDBERG Television unit unveiled its IPTV Business Solution 2.0, which uses IMS to help Operators deliver personalized television experiences. It is the first IPTV vendor to incorporate IMS into their products.

Ericsson also announced its first IMS-based customer, Portuguese Operator Sonaecom. Essentially, Ericsson will be upgrading Sonaecom’s IPTV system to IMS and also integrating its TANDBERG TV products into the Service Providers’ system.

Source: MRG September 2008 IPTV Bulletin

SecureMedia Wins Big in U.K.
September 2008

SecureMedia had a busy week during IBC 2008 making a flurry of announcements, including new customers, and partner deals.

SecureMedia announced it was chosen by Ireland’s 3PlayPlus for its Encryptonite ONE System across HomeVision, 3PlayPlus' triple-play offering. Currently, HomeVision offers 47 TV channels, as well as VOD.

SecureMedia also expanded into the U.K., with a deal with Freewire, an IPTV service that operates in over 40 university campuses in the country, to 120,000 student bedrooms. Freewire delivers 50 TV channels directly to computers, however it is currently looking for a set-top box solution for delivery to TVs. In a
similar deal, SecureMedia made a deal with Inuk Networks to integrate its content security solution with Inuk’s igloo virtual set-top box software.

Source: MRG September 2008 IPTV Bulletin

Pakistan Launches First IPTV Service
August 2008

Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) announced the launch of its IPTV network to customers in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad in August 2008.

The service, called PTCL Smart TV, is the first IPTV service in Pakistan and will feature a VoIP and Broadband package, as well for triple-play bundling.

Customers will be able to pause, rewind and fast forward through TV programming. It also comes with parental controls, searching and VOD services.

In the second phase, PCTL Smart TV will be expanded to other cities such as Peshawar, Sialkot, Gujranwala, Sheikhupura, Faisalabad, Multan, Quetta, Hub and Hyderabad.

PCTL vendors include Irdeto for Content Protection/DRM, Huawei for STBs, and Alcatel-Lucent for DSLAMs.

Triple-Play Service Price List - Pakistan

Smart Packages (TV, Broadband and Fixed Line Phone)	Broadband Speed	Cost Per Month*
1	0.5 Mbps	RS1499 (US$19.72)
2	1 Mbps	RS2229 (US$30.25)
3	2 Mbps	RS5299 (US$69.72)

Colombia’s UNE Launches First IPTV Service
August 2008

Colombian Telco Une launched IPTV services in the capital, Bogota, as well as in Medellin, making it the first IPTV service in the country. The service includes 105 TV channels, 50 audio channels and ondemand services.

Une has invested US$110 million to get the service off the ground and hopes to get between 300,000 and 500,000 subscribers in its first year of service.

It also includes a Video-on-Demand store offering films, TV series, music concerts and karaoke. Ondemand titles cost about US$1.95.

In 2009, Une is planning to offer 200Mbps broadband connections in order to power nextgeneration services like PVRs, TV caller ID, and online shopping.

Source: MRG August 2008 IPTV Bulletin

Amazon Introduced an Online Video Store
July 2008

Amazon introduced an online video store called Amazon Video on Demand which features downloadable TV shows and movies. Customers will be able to stream about 40,000 movies and television programs and view them immediately rather than downloading files first. Amazon also had a deal with Sony to put its video store on Sony’s Bravia line of HDTVs. Amazon’s customers will have access to their purchased programming on their online library so that they can access it from different computers or devices.

Source: MRG July 2008 IPTV Bulletin

NEC Corp. Acquired OSS Vendor NetCracker
July 2008

NEC Corp acquired OSS vendor NetCracker Technology for US$300 million. NetCracker also recently announced its enhanced IPTV service delivery solution to manage fulfillment, assurance and content/partner management. NEC said that NetCracker will operate as an independent business unit and “become the centerpiece of NEC's communications service provider software business.” According to media reports, NEC may still be looking for acquisition targets to grow its business.

Source: MRG July 2008 IPTV Bulletin

Cisco is Acquiring Pure Networks
July 2008

Cisco is acquiring Pure Networks, a home network software company for about US$120 million.

Source: MRG July 2008 IPTV Bulletin

What Network TV Would Like From IPTV
July 2008

In a recent presentation in Chicago at the IPTV Forum Conference, Dom Stasi, CTO and Chairman of TVN Entertainment, talked about the content owner’s perspective. He started out by saying that with the digital transition next February, many Cable companies will drop analog tiers which will give them almost infinite bandwidth. Content owners are aware of this and are putting out more content, especially for VOD.

Stasi showed how content owners use distribution windows to sell to airlines, hotels, VOD and IPTV/Cable Providers. As distribution windows get shorter (many movies have gone from theatrical release to DVD in just weeks, rather than months), IPTV companies should be getting movies earlier, which will help them with extracting revenue from VOD.

He pointed out a study completed by the University of Pennsylvania, which tracked when movies were pirated along the distribution window timeline. The results showed that very few are pirated in postproduction, but that the big piracy hit was the day and date of theatrical release. The next big hits were after each release window: hotel and airline release, and DVD release. Piracy during the PPV and VOD window was very low, just 5%. Essentially, as time goes on, there is less value in pirating a movie since everyone has seen it already, but it’s also less revenue worth to IPTV Operators as well.

Stasi said that IPTV Operators need to get content “right in the killzone”: 12 weeks from theatrical release where 90% of the value is derived.

Source: MRG July 2008 IPTV Bulletin

Hong Kong Plans to Sell 45%
June 2008

Hong Kong’s PCCW said it plans to merge its Telecom, media and IT businesses into a holding company and sell about 45% of it to investors. The new company will be called HKT Group Holdings Ltd. According to media reports, the deal would let PCCW acquire overseas operations and reduce its overall tax burden.

Source: MRG June 2008 IPTV Bulletin

Sony Broadband Connectivity: Evolutionary, Not Revolutionary
June 2008

Recently Sony made an announcement to put broadband connectors on many of its major consumer devices in order to make it easier for these devices to communicate with each other, and to download (and view) compelling video content. For example, it wants to add an Internet connection to its Bravia LCD TVs in the US by autumn, according to the Wall Street Journal. Doing this will enable Sony to download some new movies directly to the TV before the DVD release, such as the new movie “Hancock” from Sony Pictures. Older releases are not going to be released in the same “window” because of existing restrictions with the stakeholders (actors, writers, musicians, etc).

This is significant because other TV manufacturers, (e.g. Matsushita, HP, Phillips and Samsung) also have announced similar plans; and because companies like Apple, Roku/Netflix, VUDU, and even Blockbuster have all announced similar standalone boxes that download and store both HD and SD video content. In fact, Apple is now downloading some recently released HD mainstream movies.

We believe recently-released HD movies will be the main driver of the broadband VOD business, so that people will no longer need to buy an extra Blu-ray HD player to see recently released HD movies. But for people who want the highest quality surroundsound with their HD movies, Blu-ray will still fill a niche.

Sony is, therefore, using the BB strategy to prop up its Blu-ray initiative. In our opinion, because of the proliferation of HD download-and-store (Web-to-TV) products in North America, Blu-ray sales will remain high-end niche devices while the more convenient Web-to-TV devices will gain more of the mainstream HD movie markets for TV consumption of HD movies.

Swisscom Getting Past Start-Up Troubles
June 2008

It seems that Swiss IPTV provider Swisscom is getting over its growing pains and Bluewin is on the fast track to gaining new customers and competing strongly against Switzerland’s Cable Providers. Currently, Bluewin TV now has 70,000 subscribers and is growing at about 2,000 customers per week.

The company has come a long way from just a few years ago, when it was faced with vendor issues and other delays. Back in 2006, Swisscom launched its IPTV service based on the Microsoft middleware and within a few weeks it received 20,000 orders. However, lots of technical issues, (many related to conversion of the copper to VDSL) forced the company to stop active marketing until the problems were resolved. The delay was seen as a bad sign for Swisscom, for Microsoft’s IPTV solution and for the IPTV industry in general.

After Swisscom fixed its problems, it re-launched the service in January 2008 offering VOD and some PPV content. Because Switzerland is multilingual and bordered by multiple European companies, Swisscom offers its TV packages in French, German and Italian. As part of its growth, Swisscom is now pushing out new content, including HD channels and interactive features like allowing customers to program their DVRs from their mobile phones or PCs.

IPTV Subscribers Growing to 92.8 Million in 2012
May 2008

According to newly updated research in MRG’s IPTV Global Forecast: 2008 to 2012 (April 2008) report, based on most recently verified subscriber and revenue growth data, shows IPTV subscribers growing from 24.4 million to 92.8 million from 2008-2012. As a result, Service Provider revenue will total US$37.1 billion by 2012, with CapEx growing to US$5.5 billion.

MRG publishes the only bi-annual IPTV Global Forecast Report based on information gathered from over 600 IPTV Operators worldwide in over 70 countries. After conducting research and forecasting for the next five years, MRG confirms that the increased revenues of Telcos and IPTV Operators remain in positive financial territory, and are not negatively impacted by the global turmoil in the credit, oil and housing sectors.

Europe Leads Subs Through 2012
On the subscriber side, Europe’s subscriber size in 2012 will remain dominant, Asia's subscriber base will nearly equal Europe's in 2012, followed by North America.

By breaking down CapEx revenues into 7 sub-sectors (Access, Video-Headends, VOD, Set-top Boxes, Middleware, CP/DRM, and System Integration) and into 4 regions, the forecast makes it easy for hardware/software suppliers to develop strategies, and refine marketing plans and partnerships around the best growth opportunities for their companies. By also breaking out expenditures of the top 75-80% of the IPTV Operators in each region, based on prevailing prices for each region, the report makes it easier to anticipate revenues and strategies for each of the top Operators in all 28 sub-sectors.

M&A Likely to Increase
The report also reviews Mergers and Acquisition activity. "While the IPTV industry will continue on its M&A path toward consolidation in certain subsectors, such as DRM and Middleware," states MRG President, Gary Schultz, "there is no question that the IPTV industry will see unique new mergers and partnerships in the next 3 years."

For more information please visit http://www.mrgco.com/TOC_IPTV_GF0408.html.

Conexant Selling Assets to NXP and CopperGate
May 2008

Semiconductor company, NXP, has acquired the set-top box operations from Conexant for about US$145 million. NXP will acquire the Conexant’s Broadband Media Processing division which provides solutions for Satellite, Cable, Terrestrial, and IPTV set-top box applications. When the transaction is completed, NXP’s existing set-top box and digital TV operations will be combined with Conexant’s business.

According to a company rep, Conexant will no longer be in the STB business following the close of the transaction. However, the company will retain access to all of its intellectual property that its Broadband Media Processing business developed. With respect to IPTV, it will still play in that area with broadband access solutions (xDSL and PON).

Additionally, CopperGate is purchasing the HomePlug AV powerline technology from Conexant for an undisclosed sum. CopperGate acquired all relevant powerline technology, silicon products, patents, licenses, and personnel. CopperGate said that adding powerline to coax and phone lines gives Operators more choice and flexibility.

Bell Aliant Chooses Corinex for Home Networking
May 2008

In January 2008, MRG released a report on IPTV Home Networking Strategies, in which it analyzed average install times worldwide for both large and small IPTV Operators. One of the findings was that use of powerline and Wi-Fi, was helping cut install times sometimes up to 80% – a finding that received lots of media attention, given the high costs of home installation resources. This issue covers two relevant home networking events by Bell Aliant and by CopperGate – both of which reflect sharp increased interest in use of powerline technologies to save on
home CPE installation costs.

Bell Aliant has chosen Corinex’s “AnyWire” networking technology for its Aliant TV service. The companies said that it helps to provide a quicker set up which reduces overall IPTV installation time.

Aliant TV, which launched in 2005, offers customers over 60 channels at CA$29 per month for the first 12 months.

Deutsche Telekom Chooses JDSU for IPTV Monitoring
April 2008

JDSU announced that Deutsche Telekom is using its IPTV monitoring solutions as part of its roll out. Andrew Sachs said that DT wanted to ensure service quality for their multi-million dollar IPTV deployment.

JDSU's NetComplete service assurance system and IP test probes will be deployed in DT’s network. The NetComplete solution also includes software that enables monitoring of service quality from central network operations centers.

JDSU's NetComplete solution monitors IPTV video streams at the most important points in the network: the head end and the edge. Operators can learn about and attend to service issues before they impact the home experience.

They can be used during installation, and during maintenance. JDSU's solution includes handheld field instruments (the HST-3000) that can help with installation and maintenance of triple play services.

Sachs clarified that JDSU doesn’t do the load testing or performance assessment prior to deploying IPTV. Rather, JDSU probes are installed in a network once it’s up and running. Their instruments can help installers know whether a line can support a service (VOIP, data or IPTV) and pre-qualify lines.

Provisioning lines often depends upon the Operator, Sachs said. Some IPTV Operators use a “fire and forget” system where they don’t pre-qualify prospective customers. He said Neuf-Cegetel offers low-cost phone and video services and customers perform self-installation. If it turns out that the line can’t support IPTV, then customers send back the modem and equipment.

FTTH Growing in North America
April 2008

Joe Savage, President of the FTTH Council spoke during the NAB Show and said that FTTH is growing in North America with 2.91 million households connected with Fiber. That’s a 97% growth rate from a year ago when just 1.48 million households had Fiber in April 2007.

Savage said that the number of households receiving video services fiber is increasing also and now numbers over 1.6 million. Savage also said that takeup rates for IPTV services offered via FTTH are better than those over non-fiber which are at the 20 percent range. IPTV take-up (with FTTH) runs about 28 percent.

Additionally, Savage said that providers, like Verizon, are waiting for more IPTV growth before moving away from RF.

Alcatel-Lucent Acquiring ReachView Technologies
March 2008

Alcatel-Lucent is acquiring ReachView Technologies, a consulting company and software maker, for an undisclosed amount.

MPEG LA Suing Amino
March 2008

Companies in the patent licensing group MPEG LA are suing set-top box maker Amino because it is infringing on MPEG-2 compression technology patents. Amino said that it rejecting the claim that it has infringed patents and said it has not been served with any patent enforcement actions. Amino said that the MPEG LA companies have no legal right to remove Amino MPEG-2 products from sale, or to receive any damages. Bob Giddy, CEO of Amino said in a statement that the company has tried to reconcile agreements with suppliers and the MPEG LA. The patent lawsuit was filed in February in Dusseldorf, Germany.

Entriq Acquiring DayPort
March 2008

Entriq said it was acquiring DayPort, a company focusing on video publishing, content, workflow, and syndication solutions. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Roo Group Acquiring Kamera
March 2008

Roo Group, an online video network provider, said it was acquiring Swedish-based IPTV technology company Kamera.

Viaccess Acquired Orca Interactive
March 2008

Viaccess, a subsidiary of France Telecom, has acquired Orca Interactive for US$21.4 million in cash. Orca is a developer of interactive-TV applications. Reportedly, Orca (reportedly) has US$12 million cash on hand, making the real price about US$9.4 million.

NEC Re-enters IPTV Business
March 2008

In March, NEC announced that it was re-entering the IPTV business by providing solutions to carriers by using an IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) architecture. NEC said that it hopes to earn about $500 million by 2010.

French Telecom Operators Launching Soft At Home Middleware
February 2008

Three French telecom companies-- France Telecom, Sagem Communications and Thomson--launched a joint venture looking to create open source middleware products that “better fit the needs of Telecom Operators.”

Their initiative, called Soft At Home, acts as middleware, competing with Microsoft’s IPTV Mediaroom platform.

Although the companies wouldn’t say how much they’ve invested in the company, their budget was for about 80 employees. FT will hold 60% of the company, while the other two will each have 20%.

An executive for France Telecom said they were looking to develop a standard for the industry and take on the needs of Telecom Operators.

The software will include applications like photo viewing, receiving calls on TV and more. They plan to commercially launch the software in the 3rd or 4th quarter 2008 in France.

This deserves monitoring, because France Telecom/Thomson will now find itself competing with other Tier-1 developed middleware products like Cascade (PCCW) and MyViewTV (Telefónica). Conceivably, Verizon (which largely developed its own middleware for FiOS after firing Microsoft) also could spin off its middleware, although we don’t see that happening soon. A major impact will be on potentially reducing the market for Microsoft’s Mediaroom middleware.

Survey Shows Video Quality Critical to IPTV Success
February 2008

A study conducted by Multimedia Research Group found that video quality is critical to the growth and success of IPTV. By increasing quality of experience (QoE), IPTV Operators can significantly, reduce overall costs, lower customer support calls and reduce customer churn.

The study found that many Service Providers feel their existing monitoring solutions lack an accurate measurement of perceptual end-user quality.

Will 2008 Be The Year of HD?
January 2008

Comcast announced that it was adding more Hi-Def VOD content. Under an initiative called "Project Infinity" Comcast will offer over 1,000 high-definition (HD) on-demand movies and TV programs every month by the end of 2008, up from about 250 HD programs.

Currently, Comcast’s Web site shows that there are 24 HD channels available. Five of them (NFL Network, HBO, Starz, Showtime and Cinemax) are only available to those paying extra per month for those channels.

Verizon’s Web site says that FiOS TV only offers 20 HD channels which doesn’t seem to include premium channels. However, Verizon also plans to step up its HD offerings to 150 HDTV channels (including HD VOD titles) later this year.

Dish Network said it was expanding its HD channels from 76 to 100 this year. Some of these are not year-round, which brings the total to under 90.

DirecTV now has 90 national HD channels. It will also offer local HD networks in 11 additional markets by mid-2008 — bringing the total number of markets where DirecTV offers local HD programming to 76.

Verizon Hits 1 Million Subs – Looking to the Big Apple
January 2008

Verizon Hits 1 Million Subs – Looking to the Big Apple: Verizon is reportedly looking to offer FiOS TV in New York City, by making a 15-year video franchise deal with regulators. New York City’s existing franchise deals with Time Warner and Cablevision expire later this year. Its IPTV subscriber base has now reached 1 million.*

Verizon has primarily focused on suburban areas, so entering New York City could be a huge win for the company. It would go a long way to gaining subscribers and credibility as an alternative TV provider to the cable companies. It can also make it easier for Verizon to enter other urban markets, such as Boston, Washington DC or Philadelphia later this year. Entering the urban/big city market also means that Verizon must go after multiple dwelling units (MDUs), and the less wealthy. Most of Verizon’s current operational areas are in suburbs, so a push into dense urban environment will represent a new challenge and opportunity to the FiOS team.

* Note: We count FiOS as IPTV because its (100%) VOD service is carried over a managed IP network.

Current Media's IPO for $100 Million
January 2008

Current Media, the youth-oriented channel founded by former Vice President Al Gore, has filed for a $100 million IPO. The announcement comes at an important time for the programmer. According to news accounts of the future stock offering, the channel had an accumulated deficit of $31.9 million at the end of 2007. Revenues for 2007 were $63.7 million.

Since the channel boasted profitability after its first year of operation, we wonder where the $31.9M deficit came from. Yet to reach 51 million U.S. households as it has, the channel has done quite well if compared with other start-ups like Oxygen, which ran up a deficit of about $250M in 5 years and reaching not many more households.

EU Chooses DVB-H Mobile TV Standard
December 2007

The European Commission said it is endorsing DVB-H as the official mobile TV standard. This is a blow to MediaFLO, a standard developed by Qualcomm. All 27 member states will be required to support the use of DVB-H for mobile television.

Viviane Reding, the commissioner for the information society and media, welcomed the endorsement by a majority of member states. “This shows that political resolve and market developments are in tune to ensure this potentially multi-billion Euro market is on the right track by mid-2008,” she said.

“I welcome the support received today for the Commission’s mobile TV strategy and, by a strong majority of member states, also for DVB-H. At the same time, I call also on the minority of governments who are still reluctant, partly for internal reasons, to endorse DVB-H as a European standard to join the majority quickly.”

Mobile TV: Global Standards Review & Forecast for Infrastrucuture & Handsets - 2007 to 2011
December 2007

This report assesses the spectrum allocation, trials, technology usage & development, content strategies, deployments, business models and global forecasts for the mobile TV subscription growth and the infrastrucuture build-out for five major regions and over seventy Operators. The report also projects which technologies will prevail and in what regions; and shows how "co-operation" between Cellular Operators and broadcasters plays out over the next five years.

MRG's Top 10 IPTV Drivers for 2007
December 2007

Compiled by IPTV Analysts: Jose Alvear, Len Feldman, Steve Hawley and Gary Schultz

#10. 2007 was the year that the first Service Provider (Free) reached 1 million IPTV subscribers. (We're counting actual IPTV users, not customers who can't receive IPTV [due to distance], or who choose not to.) There's also still a chance that either Orange France Telecom and Verizon (or both) will reach the 1 million subscriber mark before the end of the year.

#8. In 2007, Microsoft's Service Providers started deploying IPTV to their customers in quantity. While we still have concerns about the mass deployability of the Microsoft Mediaroom solution, it's clear that systems built on Microsoft's middleware have commercial viability.

#7. 2007 was the year that the first IPTV deployments (albeit small) began in India. Meantime, Korea’s on-demand (VOD) IPTV service is skyrocketing, due partially to Korea being the most broadband-equipped country in the world (with virtually 100% broadband penetration), with the majority of homes receiving 100 Mbps.

#6. In 2007, PCCW was passed as the world's largest IPTV Operator by both Free and Orange France Telecom. As a result, France became the world's largest IPTV market (although PCCW also continues to grow).

#5. For the first time, major Cable Operators like Comcast are publicly expressing concerns that the Telcos' IPTV efforts are starting to eat away at their subscriber bases - and that is impacting shareholders.

#4. When IPTV was an "early adopter phenomenon," making it work was an exercise in creative engineering and the Operator's engineers were driving the train. Now, more than ever, concerns over cost containment, breakeven and profitability have engaged the business side of the house. This has resulted in a rising interest in advertising and content.

#3. From an infrastructure perspective, IPTV turned a corner this year. Operators no longer question whether IPTV can be made to work as a business. Instead, the attention has moved toward refining the consumer’s experience, and therefore toward investing in test, measurement and monitoring.

#2. Now that U.S. Tier-1’s (Verizon and AT&T) are growing their subscribers, the U.S. is being seen as finally starting to catch up with the rest of the IPTV world. However the perception that the U.S. and Canada are "behind" the rest of the world is somewhat inaccurate because smaller North American Operators have been doing IPTV for as long as a decade.

#1. MPEG-4 AVC set-top boxes are shipping in volume, making it the first time that the promises of MPEG-4 AVC could be realized after many years of
waiting.

And here's a "top ten stay tuned in 2008" item: "Convergence" is coming, but it isn't here yet. Operators, middleware, security and other infrastructure suppliers are working together to enable and test multi-service use-cases, but there is still some uncertainty as to which ones will reward them with added revenues.

German IPTV Market Heats Up
November 2007

Europe is home to some of the largest IPTV services. For example, France already has about 2 million total IPTV subscribers. However, Germany has been lagging in IPTV, despite having a big economy, and a tech-savvy population of over 82 million people.

Currently there are three IPTV providers in Germany: HanseNet, Deutsche Telecom and Arcor.

Bell Canada Postpones IPTV Service
November 2007

Bell Canada is reportedly postponing the launch of its IPTV ADSL service. The decision to put it on hold has been known among key players in the industry, but it’s a long road for Bell.

Back in 2003, Microsoft and Bell Canada announced that they were trial testing IPTV. Later, Bell said it would launch commercial IPTV in 2006, but before the year was over, the company said that it would wait until Microsoft released an update of its IPTV software.

Now, about four years later Bell Canada hasn’t launched its service yet. Company officials refuse to talk about when the IPTV service may launch, saying they don’t comment on future products and releases.

Internet Video: Threat or Opportunity for IPTV Operators
October 2007

IPTV operators of managed networks everywhere are wondering how best to deal with (best-effort) Internet Video services that may eventually become either partners or competitors. MRG’s new report "Internet Video for IPTV Service Providers" investigates how IPTV can leverage both professionally-developed and user-generated video content to reduce churn and generate revenue.

"We've found that using Internet Video is a tremendous opportunity if it's tailored around the IPTV operator's local market," states Len Feldman, Director of IPTV Analysis for MRG, Inc. "Internet Video, if brought onto a managed network with superb search and display, can be a significant added value for the IPTV operator."

Verizon vs. Cable Operators
October 2007

Now two years old, Verizon has spent over $18 billion for its FiOS TV service. Verizon said it now has 500,000 customers, and is adding 2,600 new customers every business day. An analyst with Banc of America, predicts that Verizon will have 2 million FiOS TV subscribers by the end of 2008. That would make it the 9th largest provider of TV service in the U.S.

At an investor conference, Comcast said that Verizon is a real competitor and is taking customers away from them.

Arris Acquires C-Cor for $730 Million
September 2007

Arris announced that it is acquiring C-Cor for $730 million. The deal is expected to close in January 2008. The combined company will have over $1.2 billion in sales over the past 12 months.

Arris and C-Cor have had a long standing business relationship, said the companies.

Avail Buys Kasenna's ViewNow Subsidiary
September 2007

Avail Media has acquired Kasenna’s ViewNow subsidiary. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

ViewNow provides video-on-demand programming from major studios, to cable providers and Telcos. Content providers include Buena Vista/Disney, Dream Works, Lions Gate Films, NBC/Universal, New Line Cinema, Paramount, 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros.

Alcatel-Lucent Buys Tamblin
September 2007

Alcatel-Lucent announced it acquired Tamblin, a privately held company for an undisclosed sum. Alcatel-Lucent said that Tamblin will provides applications and tool kits to enhance the company’s IPTV service.

Tamblin provides interactive TV advertising campaigns and can help provider track usage. Tamblin's primary product suite, i-ZoneTV, is an application creation and management system developed for the TV broadcast industry.

Independent Hollywood Studios Consider Simultaneous Release
August 2007

Usually, when a movie is premiered it hits the theaters, then months later it goes through other releases such as DVD, premium TV, VOD and finally free TV. These release windows, as they’re called, have been around for many years and are in place to maximum revenue from each source.

However, with the popularity of Internet TV, some Hollywood studios are looking at something called “simultaneous release.” This means premiering movies in theaters, DVDs and the Internet at the same time.

Simultaneous release is an important topic for service providers in the IPTV space since it affects when movies are available for video-on-demand.

SecureMedia Acquired By Cavalier Telephone
August 2007

SecureMedia announced that it was acquired by Cavalier Telephone and TV, a CLEC provider in the United States. Cavelier is also SecureMedia’s customer.

Largest local exchange carrier, with 350,000 telephone customers and “ambitious plans for IPTV,” said Whit Jackson, VP of Business Development at SecureMedia.

SecureMedia will remain a wholly owned subsidiary and will continue to have its existing customers. “We’re looking to continue to grow the business and still have a road map, with the same team,” he said. SecureMedia will also actually hire more people soon, he said.

iPhone Video Support
July 2007

With the release of iPhone this month, we’re finally getting to hear about real-world usage and reviews. Most reviews are positive, but admit that the iPhone has some flaws. Apple has yet to announce sales for the current quarter, but AT&T’s activations weren’t as high as many expected.

In its second-quarter earnings announcement, AT&T said that 146,000 iPhones were activated in a day and a half. Most analysts predicted that AT&T would report 500,000 to 700,000 activations during the first few days.

However, not all of AT&T’s sales were recorded (just the first two days before the end of the quarter), and there were many reports of delays in signing up for service. So it’s possible that AT&T may still show good numbers for the next quarter. The one good news for AT&T is that 40% of iPhone subscribers were new to AT&T.

Chile Goes IPTV
July 2007

The competition for IPTV service in Chile is heating up. In 2006, Chilean telecom operators CTC and Telsur announced plans to launch IPTV with Telsur investing US$30 million, and CTC investing over US$100 million in IPTV and broadband investments.

In July 2007, Telefónica del Sur (Telsur) launched WiTV, an IPTV service available in parts of southern Chile. Telsur’s 50,000 broadband customers can order the service featuring 80 channels.

Meanwhile Chilean fixed line incumbent Telefónica Chile already launched its IPTV service in the capital, Santiago. Currently, Telefónica Chile’s service is still in its initial phase and is limited to wealthier neighborhoods. In 2008, the company will rollout service to other parts of Santiago.

Symmetricom Unveils QoS Probe
July 2007

Since launching our IPTV Video Quality: QoS & QoE report in 2007, MRG has been publishing articles on Test & Measurement as a means of educating the market in the tools that help operators achieve improved QoS and QoE in their systems. This is one of those articles.

Symmetricom announced the new Q-400 IPTV probe, that enables Quality of Service (QoS) assurance and Quality of Experience (QoE). Symmetricom created and patented a scoring system to measure IPTV service quality, called V-Factor, so that network administrators can see what the customer is experiencing in real time. Symmetricom's probes collect and report aggregate statistics in real time for customer flow simulations and traffic flow analysis.

The Q-400 monitors up to 400 SD or HD H-264 IPTV streams and up to 10,000 VoIP streams in parallel in full passive mode.

IMS Playing Increasing Role in Converged Services
June 2007

IMS for IPTV will likely start with cross platform services like caller ID on TV screens.

IMS will help mobile media devices register with local broadband networks to be able to access media and other information and display it in accordance with the capabilities of the local display (ranging from a small low resolution screen to a large HD wall display).

SES Americom Unveils IP-Prime Turnkey IPTV Solution
June 2007

IP-Prime offers various programming options, a carrier-grade headend, set-top boxes and multiple middleware solutions to make it a complete end-to-end IPTV solution.

Bill Squadron, senior vice president of media partnerships at SES Americom, said that its solution is the closest thing to “flicking a switch” to turn on an IPTV service. During NxtComm, SES showcased IP-Prime with NDS middleware.

IP-Prime is available as a “Transport Only” system where programming is delivered to the telco’s headend in MPEG-4 and distributed using the telco’s own STB solution. Or it can be used as a “Fully Managed” solution where SES takes care of the entire process from ingest to deliver into set-tops.

Internet Video for IPTV Service Providers: A Preview
June 2007

It’s impossible to underestimate the impact of Internet video on service providers. The YouTube phenomenon is driving incredible demand for bandwidth; by some estimates, web video comprises as much as half of all backbone bandwidth. Subscribers are demanding more and more bandwidth to both view and submit video over the web. And when those subscribers are watching web video, they’re not watching broadcast or VOD content on IPTV services. But can the problem of Internet video also represent an opportunity? Can service providers actually make money with Internet video?

In July 2007, MRG will release “Internet Video for IPTV Service Providers,” a comprehensive report that will explain how to utilize Internet video in order to decrease churn and increase both subscription and advertising revenues. The report will cover both user-generated content (“bottom-up”) as well as professionally-produced (“top-down”) content, and the ways in which the video services offered by service providers should differ from YouTube and other sites.

The report will examine the technical and cost aspects of building and operating an Internet video capability, including outsourcing options throughout the content chain. A variety of vendors will be profiled, along with their relevant products and services. The issues of why, when and how to move Internet video to the set-top box will also be explored.

BSkyB Talking to Tiscali; Drops PVR Fees
June 2007

U.K. satellite broadcaster BSkyB is reportedly in talks with Italian-based Tiscali to place its basic selection of in-house channels on Tiscali’s UK IPTV platform. Additionally, BSkyB is dropping its subscription fee for its Sky+ PVR package, which currently costs £10 ($20) per month.

Dropping the fee for PVR means that BSkyB is trying to push the competition and drive down costs. Possibly other TV providers may be forced to drop PVR fees and absorb the costs themselves. Meantime, BskyB has announced plans to stop supplying Virgin Cable with satellite feeds.

{Note: analyst comments are italicized}

Motorola to Acquire Modulus Video
May 2007

Motorola announced this month that it will acquire MPEG-4 encoding company Modulus Video for an undisclosed sum.

Bob Wilson, chairman & CEO of Modulus Video, said that the news of the acquisition was well received by customers, partners and their investors. The acquisition will likely close in June or July 2007.

Motorola has been Modulus’ biggest customer for the last two years, said Wilson. “It’s a natural fit,” he said.

Avail Media Gets Funding
May 2007

Avail Media closed a series-B round with $17 million in funding co-led by Washington, D.C. area funds Novak Biddle Venture Partners and Columbia Capital.

Avail Media's solution allows IPTV content to be acquired directly from programmers in its full-resolution and unaltered format, encoded and encrypted, and finally transported to the customer via satellite.

The funds will assist the company as it expands its suite of services and brings on additional employees for operations and technology development.

Comcast Drops Microsoft from Cable Boxes
May 2007

Comcast said it was dropping Microsoft’s TV software from its digital cable boxes in the Seattle area. Instead, Comcast will use GuideWorks electronic program guide software, which is already in use in the rest of the U.S. GuideWorks is a joint venture between Comcast and Gemstar TV Guide.

Seattle was the only Comcast system using Microsoft software. Microsoft, however, said that its cable TV software is still in use in Latin America.

GuideWorks will be rolled out in stages to existing digital cable boxes from June through early September.

HD: A Must-Have for IPTV in North America
April 2007

During the NAB 2007 conference, MRG’s Bulletin Editor, Jose Alvear, moderated a panel session entitled “IPTV Wanted...Must Do HD” with company reps from Microsoft, Calix, Modulus Video, and AT&T.

The panelists provided a good cross section of the front to end IPTV experience and spoke about the drivers and challenges to HD over IPTV. Microsoft’s Channel Manager, Bruce Churchill, pointed out that many people change how they watch TV after getting an HD set. “Many people with HD only watch HD content, or channel surf HD channels first,” he said.

Overall, all the panelists agreed that HD is a must-have experience for IPTV customers. In 2006, digital TV sets outsold standard sets by 46 percent in the U.S. and total HDTV sets were at 11 million. And with the analog switch-off date (February 2009) fast approaching in the U.S., providers will have to be nimble to keep customers happy.

The U.S. is one of the biggest IPTV HDTV markets. According to MRG research, 15% of IPTV households (about 274,000) in the U.S. already have HD sets. This number will climb to 85% (8.82 million) by 2011, driven by the move to HD and the popularity of HDTVs.

HD is already a “must-have” for most IPTV service providers. If an IPTV provider can offer more HD channels than cable or satellite, it might be able to compete and convince customers to switch to IPTV.

DirecTV has the most HD channels, but most of those are sports programming. Removing those extra channels, AT&T’s U-Verse, an IPTV service, is beating cable and satellite. Comcast has the fewest HD channels, but charges a lower monthly fee also.

This HD advantage is what IPTV providers must push for since IPTV is still a difficult sell for new customers. In fact, AT&T recently announced that it was offering free HD service for 1 year for new subscribers of its U-Verse service.

In the U.S. where cable competition and satellite competition is strong, IPTV service providers have to differentiate their services with HD including HD DVRs. They must also provide better quality than competing HD services. Also, satellite and cable providers have been known to scale back the HD bitrate which means potential quality problems that IPTV operators can exploit.

One thing that can help the economics of delivering HD is to lower the video bitrate. On the NAB exhibit floor, Grass Valley/Thomson was demonstrating its Mustang encoding chip which claims to deliver high-motion HD video at 4 to 5Mbps, which is about half the bitrate of current MPEG-4/AVC encoders that range from 8 Mbps and 12 Mbps. Lower bitrates means more HD channels for providers and consumers and that’s what everyone is after.

IPTV will lead the HD market based on MPEG-4/AVC—faster than cable or digital terrestrial. As providers switch to HD, MPEG-2 equipment will become obsolete. MRG research shows that revenue from MPEG-2 set-top boxes and headends will disappear by 2008 or 2009 and be replaced by MPEG-4 SD and HD equipment.

For more information about HD/AVC IPTV encoders and set-top boxes, see MRG’s new IPTV Global Forecast — 2007 to 2011, April 2007 or visit our website at www.mrgco.com/TOC_IPTV_GF0407.html.

Packet Vision Looks to IPTV Advertising
April 2007

With the success of many IPTV deployments, people are starting to ask: What about IPTV advertising? Packet Vision is answering that call by “providing targeting TV advertising to specific households via IPTV.”

Charlie Horrell, CEO of Packet Vision, says that the company’s technology supports local ad insertion, interactive and targeted advertising that can be tailored to match the demographics of individual households and even altered in real-time to reflect viewers’ reactions.

Founded in 2004, Packet Vision is a relatively new company and just recently announced its first customer trial in the US with Alaskan IPTV operator MTA.

Packet Vision’s ad server sits on the edge of the network, cuts in advertising and outputs 200 independent video streams. Aside from the hardware, the system also comes with sales and a traffic management software system so that providers can easily track and manage advertising campaigns.

Horrell said, “telcos are busy getting subscribers and are not focused on advertising much.” But as IPTV subscribers hit the critical mass, he believes providers will start IPTV advertising.

Packet Vision is interested in talking with everyone in the IPTV space, but is specifically looking at the mature European market such as France, Italy and Spain. But they are also interested in U.S. providers like AT&T and Verizon.

There are three types of data that can be gathered by Packet Vision’s technology: CRM information from the telco provider, the address or location, and tracking via IP tools such as channel changes and clicks.

Horrell said Packet Vision is using a “zero-risk, low capital investment model” which means the company will provide the server for free, in exchange for getting a percentage of revenues.

“One-to-one advertising hasn’t gotten very far. It’s more like one to many ones,” said Horrell. He says that viewers will see more relevant advertisements, which can prevent “channel hopping” and start new ad models for TV advertising.

Targeted advertising capabilities are great, but most service providers aren’t even selling conventional linear advertising yet.

“Most of the pieces of the jigsaw to turn IPTV into a mass revolution are in place, and the service that Packet Vision is providing will be the catalyst to turn opportunity into revenue for players in this market,” said Richard Scott George, GM of Packet Vision.

Servers and insertion devices are such a small percentage of the total cost of a system that we think that few system operators will trade off servers for a percentage of revenues. However, there could be a significant opportunity for a vendor that offers a complete, turnkey ad sales and delivery service, including hardware and software along with a qualified local and national ad sales force, in return for a share of ad revenues.

Iceland's IPTV Market
March 2007

Iceland Telecom (now called Siminn) says that it has deployed IPTV around the entire country with over 50% of its 52,000 DSL customers subscribing to the TV service.

In November 2004, Siminn launched its IPTV service in 10 towns around Iceland and by late 2005 it began offering full IPTV services with more than 60 channels, and VOD. Siminn is using Thomson middleware, Thales SmartVision broadband service platform and IBM servers.

Cablevision Loses Network DVR Lawsuit
March 2007

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled against Cablevision’s attempt to launch a network digital video recorder. Twentieth Century Fox, Universal City Studios, Paramount Pictures, Disney, CBS, ABC, NBC Studios, Turner Broadcasting’s Cartoon Network and CNN sued Cablevision in May 2006 claiming that its network DVR (called RS-DVR) would violate copyright laws.

The judge ruled that a remote-storage DVR would allow Cablevision and its customers to engage “in unauthorized reproductions and transmissions of plaintiffs' copyrighted programs.”

“The RS-DVR is not a stand-alone machine that sits on top of a television,” Chin wrote. “Rather, it is a complex system that involves an ongoing relationship between Cablevision and its customers, payment of monthly fees by the customers to Cablevision, ownership of the equipment remaining with Cablevision, the use of numerous computers and other equipment located in Cablevision's private facilities and the ongoing maintenance of the system by Cablevision personnel.”

Network DVRs lets users store TV shows on a provider’s network rather than on individual set-top-box hard drives. The judge ruled that recordings on a remote hard drive would be unauthorized reproductions.

The studios argued that because Cablevision was hosting the video on its servers, it wasn’t a network DVR, but a video-on-demand service and Cablevision needed permission to “rebroadcast” the programs.

Cablevision argued that its network DVR would not violate copyright laws since it works similar to DVRs in customers’ homes. In fact, Cablevision said it would dedicate separate storage space for each subscriber. In other words, if 500 subscribers decided to record the TV show “Lost,” there would be 500 separate copies saved on the Cablevision network.

Cablevision said it is reviewing the opinion and assessing all of its options, including an appeal.

Content providers are evidently trying to protect their content and possibly try to get TV operators to negotiate separate fees for implementing network DVRs. At the same time TV providers are trying to save money by deploying less expensive set-top boxes to customers and using their own network storage.

Meanwhile, the court decision is good news for TiVo, as well as set-top box makers like Scientific Atlanta and Motorola. As DVRs evolve and become more mainstream, however, it will be difficult to separate VOD from DVR functions. If Cablevision appeals, network DVRs in the U.S. may still be up in the air, however.

Hawaii IPTV Service Launches
February 2007

NeuLion announced that its IPTV service was chosen by Hawaii IPTV for its Hawaii Television Network. Hawaii IPTV will deliver live and on-demand content consisting of various Hawaii programming including news, and other local TV shows.

Content is delivered over the public Internet, to the Hawaii IPTV set-top box ($150). Customers need a broadband connection to use the service.

The company said that the goal of the Hawaii IPTV service is to “deliver the Hawaii experience to Native Hawaiians and Hawaii expatriates living away from Hawaii.”

Ericsson and Arris Bid for Tandberg
February 2007

In late February, Ericsson made a surprise bid for Tandberg Television pitting it against Arris, which announced in January, that it was acquiring Tandberg for $1.2 billion. Ericsson upped the offer to $1.39 billion cash, which is about 10% more than Arris’ offer. Now it’s up to Arris to respond. News reports say that Arris is looking to make a counter offer, but nothing was announced so far.

Last month, Tandberg executives said they were backing Arris’ bid while calling the Ericsson offer "unsolicited." Still, if Arris does want to make a counter offer, it has to go through Ericsson since it owns a large percentage of Tandberg stock.

Mergers and Acquisitions
January 2007

Telco giant Ericsson is acquiring edge router company Redback Networks for about $1.9 billion. Silicon Valley-based Redback has over 700 carrier customers in 80 countries and has some top-tier customers. Fifteen of the top 20 telephone carriers worldwide use Redback's technology, including broadband routers to manage IP-based data, voice and video services.

Arris and Tandberg announced that they were merging at a deal valued at $1.2 million. The companies said by combining Arris’ VOIP equipment with Tandberg’s IPTV products they will accelerate the combination of voice, video and data products. According to MRG, Inc. Tandberg enjoys about 30% of the global IPTV video headend (encoder) market, with a strong position in Tier 1 and Tier 2 IPTV service providers.

Motorola announced it was acquiring Tut Systems for about $39 million. Tut is a provider of carrier-class digital video encoding, processing and distribution products using MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AVC video compression. It also provides local ad insertion, forward error correction, and real-time conditioning of video and audio.

Tiscali to Relaunch Homechoice as Tiscali TV
January 2007

Tiscali announced that it expects to gain about 500,000 U.K. subscribers in 2007 for its Homechoice IPTV offering. Tiscali acquired Homechoice TV when it bought Video Networks International in August 2006 and will rename the offering Tiscali TV when it relaunches later this year.

Broadband provider Tiscali has about 1.4 million U.K. DSL subscriber users and it hopes to convince more than half of them to add TV services. Tiscali said it plans to have over 80 TV channels including E4, MTV, Paramount Comedy and Cartoon Network, as well as 1,000 VOD movies.

In a survey commissioned by Tiscali of 1,400 users, 42% of respondents believe that today's traditional TV schedules will no longer exist in 10 years. Seventeen percent of users surveyed said they already watch on-demand TV, and 63% want to watch on-demand. Being able to watch movies at any time is so important to British consumers that more than half (51%) would prefer to rent a movie by downloading it through their broadband connection rather than go to a video rental store.

Time for Microsoft to Deliver
December 2006

Microsoft’s software deployments are starting to become commercial. Deutsche Telekom and Swisscom started their service in October 2006 and BT started its service in December 2006. AT&T’s service started in June 2006, but did not start to scale until the end of November 2006.

In addition, Verizon had to develop its own software (instead of using Microsoft’s) to support advanced functions such as whole home PVR in its FiOS TV FTTP IPTV service. Verizon uses Microsoft’s middleware for cable companies to manage channel selection. Since Verizon uses a cable like RF architecture for delivering broadcast channels, it does not use the same Microsoft IPTV Edition software that Deutsche Telekom, Swisscom, BT and AT&T do.

2007 will show how well Microsoft’s software operates. The first clue will be whether or not AT&T expands its IPTV service to 10 or more additional markets by the end of 2006, as it had previously promised. The real test will be to see the rate at which these services add subscribers. If these four IPTV services have 100 or 200 thousand subscribers between them by the middle of 2007, then Microsoft will be on its way. If not, then Microsoft may well see its market position slip.

Alcatel/Lucent Merged
December 2006

The Alcatel/Lucent merger completed with the resulting companying being called Alcatel-Lucent. The logo itself is the letter L and the letter A mapped into an infinity sign. Serge Tchuruk of Alcatel will be the Chairman of the Board and Pat Russo of Lucent will be the company’s CEO. The company stated that it will be the number one company in wireline, number three in mobile systems, and in the top three in applications and services. In the presentation it highlight its leading position in IPTV.

Alcatel-Lucent is the number one company in IPTV access systems, both globally and in Europe. It should be able to maintain that position.

It will be interesting to watch the Microsoft relationship. We believe that problems with Microsoft’s software have put a strain on this relationship. Alcatel’s recent video-on-demand patent suits against Microsoft is another sign of this strain.

Hong Kong Broadband Flat
November 2006

City Telecom saw an in increase of 13 thousand IPTV subscribers for its Hong Kong Broadband Network Systems IPTV service bringing the total number of subscribers to 116 thousand at the end of August 2006.

City Telecom experienced a decrease in its total broadband subscriber base to 220 thousand compared to 227 thousand 12 months earlier. The company stated that it is upgrading its consumer business to less price sensitive and more service oriented customers. Consequently, its consumer broadband revenue increased 23 percent to $95 million.

Alcatel/Lucent Merger Approved
November 2006

George W. Bush, the President of the U.S., gave the final approval for the Alcatel/Lucent merger. This approval was based on agreements between Alcatel/Lucent and U.S. government security agencies. Alcatel’s current CEO Serge Tchurik will be the Chairman of the new company and Lucent’s current CEO Pat Russo will be the CEO of the new company.

This approval followed Congressional hearings addressing the U.S. security aspects of the merger. Lucent Bell Labs does significant defense related contracting with the U.S. government. Alcatel/Lucent addressed this by making Bell Labs a separate subsidiary following the merger.

AT&T's Slow Start
October 2006

In its 3Q06 financial announcement, AT&T stated that it had 3 thousand U-verse IPTV subscribers at the end of September 2006. This is up from 1 thousand at the end of June 2006. It stated that it is getting a strong initial response with 85 percent of subscribers taking higher end video packages

AT&T also stated that its U-verse FTTN deployment passed 1.3 million homes at the end of the third quarter of 2006. It is forecasting 2.4 million homes passed by then end of the year.

AT&T is continuing to discuss a Houston launch with HDTV by the end of November 2006 and that it expects to launch about 15 markets within its territory by the end of 2006. It also stated that its initial market entrance and expansion will be deliberate.

Verizon FiOS TV Booming
October 2006

Verizon made a presentation to the financial community to describe the current and anticipated returns from its FiOS FTTP deployment. It has been under pressure to explain why FiOS is worth the heavy investment that it is making.

Verizon is achieving 15 percent penetration of its FiOS service where the service has been available for at least 12 months. It is achieving a monthly churn rate of less than 1.5 percent. It stated that 70 percent of its FiOS subscribers are new to Verizon broadband.

By the end of 2006 Verizon will have two national super headends in operation along with nine regional headends. There will be 292 central offices supporting FiOS services. Verizon will also have video franchises in 300 municipalities that will cover 6.1 million households.

Google Acquires YouTube
October 2006

Google acquired the Internet video content provider YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock even though YouTube had no significant revenue stream itself. YouTube reportedly attracted 57 percent of visits to Internet video sites in September.

YouTube’s popularity made it an attractive acquisition for Google. Google’s mastery over Internet advertising puts it in a unique position to capitalize on YouTube’s popularity.

Free's First Half Results
September 2006

Free, the competitive carrier in France, announced its first half 2006 results. It now has 1.9 million broadband subscribers. It has 1.26 million TV enabled subscribers and had 273 thousand paying IPTV subscribers at the end of the half.

During the first half of 2006, Free introduced HD services and broadcasted French Open tennis matches in HD. It also introduced the ability to record and time shift TV programming on its HD Freebox set-top box.

Shanghai Telecom IPTV Service
September 2006

Shanghai Telecom introduced its IPTV service together with the Shanghai Media Group (SMG). It stated that there are currently 10 thousand subscribers using this service. It expects the number of subscribers to grow to 80 thousand by the end of 2006 and 200 thousand by the end of 2007. It stated that this service will become profitable at 1 million subscribers.

This service will provide 58 channels, 12 from SMG, 15 from China Central Television (CCTV), 20 feature channels, and 9 from other provincial satellite sources. This service will include a time shifted TV service that will provide the ability to replay programs within 48 hours of their initial airing time.

The service will also include 3 thousand video-on-demand and pay per view services. Viewing a film will cost $.25 to $1.25. Viewing each episode of a TV series will cost $.038 to $.125.

Market Leader Update
August 2006

MRG has just released the latest version of its IPTV Market Leader report. This shows which companies are leading globally and in four regions worldwide within in each of the six market categories we are tracking.

These ratings were based on ranking companies based on the number of subscribers in the 474 IPTV service providers that we have identified globally.

Mergers and acquisitions have had a big effect on these ratings. Tandberg’s acquisition of Skystream put it into a solid number two position globally and number one in Europe and Asia. Motorola’s acquisition puts it into the number one position in set-top boxes. The Alcatel/Lucent merger will put the resulting company in a strong number one position globally.

The conversion of in-house middleware packages to merchant status is the second major trend. PCCW’s Cascade subsidiary has sold its middleware package to True in Thailand. Converting the Cascade middleware to merchant status put it into the number one position globally.

Lucent has taken over the support of Telefonica’s in-house developed middleware software. Lucent is starting to aggressively market this software as a product, at least to Telefonica subsidiaries in Latin America.

The IPTV market is still forming. We expect that these ratings will continue to change significantly as the Market matures over the next couple of years.

Verizon Under Siege
August 2006

Verizon lost 4.2 million switched access lines in 2005, which is more than twice the 1.9 million switched access lines that AT&T, BellSouth, and Qwest lost together.

While AT&T and BellSouth have been successful in reducing the rate at which they are losing switched access lines in 2004 and 2005, Verizon took a big turn for the worse in 2005.

Verizon has very strong cable competition, particularly Cablevision in the New York area that has had quite successful VoIP offerings

Free's Q2 Results
August 2006

The number of broadband subscribers at Free in France grew from 1.8 million to 1.9 million at the end of June. The number of IPTV capable subscribers grew to 1.4 million. The company now has 273 thousand subscribers paying for at least one IPTV service. Its subscribers have purchased 803 thousand video-on-demand features since it was introduce in December 2005.

Cisco to Acquire Arroyo
August 2006

Cisco agreed to acquire video-on-demand system company Arroyo Video Solutions. This extends Cisco’s IPTV coverage into a new market segment and puts it directly into competition with Microsoft.

Arroyo has been focusing on the U.S. cable market and we have not identified any IPTV deployments. Arroyo’s strategy is to focus on personalization, which plays on a real IPTV strength.

The question now is what Cisco will do so that it can compete head-to-head with the Alcatel/Lucent/ Microsoft colossus. Middleware is the key missing element, but Content Protection/DRM is important as well. Cisco is an investor in leading Content Protection/DRM company Widevine.

Motorola to Acquire Broadbus
July 2006

Motorola announced that it would acquire Broadbus to round out its video offerings. Broadbus’ strong position in the U.S. cable market makes it a good addition to Motorola.

Broadbus is using its success with the cable providers to enter the IPTV video-on-demand market. It has 85 cable deployments and stated that it deploys with a tier one carrier in the U.S.

Broadbus uses solid state memory to distribute video-on-demand content from a central disk based library. It stated that it can support 100 thousand streams with six servers and 112 disk drives. Adding time shifted TV to this service would double the system to support 200 thousand streams with 12 servers. The number of disk drives would grow to 154.

The company states that the replacement of disk drives with solid state memory reduces facility costs such as power, space, and cooling by over 80 percent. It also states that its system will reduce the number of software upgrades by more than 90 percent. It has found that these savings can reduce OpEx by about 50 percent.

Sky Offers Free Broadband
July 2006

It seems that offering certain components of an IPTV triple play offering for free is a common strategy. Free, of course, means that it is included in the base price of the bundle. Often a basic set of broadcast channels or VoIP services are offered for free.

In a new twist on this strategy, BSkyB, the satellite video provider is turning it on its head. It will provide a free broadband connection for subscribers to its video service. The range of services offered is given below:

This is a disruptive strategy that repositions BSkyB from a single play video provider to a triple play provider all at once. Its offer of a basic broadband service for free to all video subscribers will be very attractive to the mass market that has not yet committed to broadband. These people know they should have broadband and the ability to get it for “free” will cause many of them to make the move.

This is a direct challenge to the new BT service which is based on free digital terrestrial content and to its 21st century VoIP strategy. It raises the ante against the consolidating cable companies. It also makes it much tougher for the competitive IPTV companies such as Orange and Video Networks.

It seems likely that Sky in Italy will also adopt this strategy to fight off competition from Telecom Italia, FastWeb, and the new digital terrestrial services.

This is also a logical strategy in the U.S. Echostar seems to be exploring its own broadband alternative, including WiMAX technology. Echostar may well find an attractive broadband offering in the U.S. necessary to counter increasing competition from the cable and the IPTV companies.

AT&T Introduces IPTV
June 2006

AT&T introduced its U-Verse IP TV service to 5,000 homes scattered across San Antonio. It is priced at $69 to $124 per month with a family oriented bundle at $54 per month. A Spanish language package is available for an additional $10 per month.

AT&T offers over 200 channels along with a data service with speeds of 1.5 to 6 Mbps. The service comes with three set-top boxes, one with DVR capability. The standard installation fee is $95.

AT&T also introduced its Homezone service that combines Echostar video content with video-on-demand delivered over a DSL line to a 2Wire set-top box.

AT&T plans to introduce its U-Verse service in 15 to 20 markets by the end of 2006. It has not set a date for a full market launch in San Antonio or for any other market. It has stated that it will introduce the service in Houston, Texas.

Ericsson Introduces IPTV
June 2006

Ericsson introduced its IP TV offering at Globalcomm with a formal partnership with Kasenna who will provide its video-on-demand and middleware products. This offering will use Ericsson access systems and support broadcast and video-on-demand services.

In its next phase in 2007, the company plans to add IMS support to its IP TV offering in order to support both communications services and TV services.

The third phase of its implementation in 2008 will include convergence with mobile networks, including services that support both mobile and IP TV devices.

At Globalcomm, Ericsson showed a DLNA based demonstration with products from Sony.

Ericsson comes to the IP TV market later than the other major telecom suppliers such as Alcatel, Lucent, and Siemens. It faces the same problem as Siemens – it must overcome Microsoft’s dominance with large service providers.

Ericsson is taking a smart approach and leverage its mobile and IMS experience. It seems clear that mobile technologies will be increasing in IP TV networks, and Ericsson is well positioned to take advantage of that.

Siemens and Nokia to Merge
June 2006

Siemens and Nokia became the latest pair of major telecom suppliers to announce a merger. This follows hard on the heels of the Alcatel/Lucent Merger announcement in April 2006.

Nokias Networks division will merge with Siemens Carrier division. Both of these organizations offer Wireless and Wireline services and have aggregate revenue of €15.8 billion. They stated that 78 percent of these revenues are from wireless networks and 22 percent from wireline. The companies expect cost savings of €1.5 billion.

The resulting organization will be owned 50-50 by each company and will be headquartered in Helsinki. Most of the top level executives will come from Nokia.

The companies included IP TV as one of the leading market segments that the combined company will address.

The merger will not improve Siemens position in the MRG Market Leader Report. We have not identified any Nokia products in the IP TV market segments that we track in this report.

We expect that the resulting company will continue to put a high priority on IP TV, given the importance of IP TV in the service provider market today.

This merger together with the Alcatel/Lucent and the Ericsson/Marconi mergers will put significant pressure on Nortel, Cisco, NEC, and Motorola, as well as smaller companies such as Tellabs, Fujitsu, and Hitachi to find merger partners.

Siemens IPTV Home Equipment
May 2006

Siemens offers a line of home gateways that support VoIP and WiFi. Siemens has found that 802.11g WiFi is not sufficiently robust for IP TV video traffic. The company does expect that 802.11n will resolve these issues.

Siemens stated that both power line and polymer optical fiber (POF) will be popular methods for networking homes for IP TV. POF is a very thin fiber strand that can be deployed by the home owner. It is unobtrusive and can be easily hidden under rugs or other places. POF does not have the interference problems found with either wireless or power line systems.

Siemens also demonstrated its Tango customer equipment network element manager. Tango can manage both Siemens and non Siemens customer systems. It provides the ability to log events, gather data, and configure home devices. It does not have heuristic systems that provide intelligent filtering that would facilitate managing large populations of subscribers (several hundreds of thousands or millions).

As we reported previously, Siemens is introducing a line of MPEG-4 AVC IP TV set-top boxes. Its low end box will come as an HD/SD or an SD only. These two units are basically the same, except that the SD only unit has less memory to lower its cost. Siemens expects that the HD/SD unit will be widely used in Europe and North America and the SD only unit will be used in Latin America.

Siemens also offers a somewhat larger unit that may have a hard disk included with it. Both of these units support both SD and HD.

The final pair of units are hybrid devices that support both IP TV and DVB digital terrestrial services. A hard disk is available and both of these units support both SD and HD.

Siemens is still on schedule for a September volume delivery of these units; however, any further schedule slips from its chip suppliers will cause their set-top boxes to slip as well.

FastWeb IPTV Treading Water
May 2006

We met with FastWeb in Milan this month about a week after it announced its results for the first quarter 2006. It used this meeting to point out to the financial community that it is now a national service provider in Italy.

FastWeb described its geographic expansion which increased the number of central offices served from 304 in December 2004 to 800 today with the number of metro areas served growing from 14 to 130 at the same time. It now covers 45 percent of the households in Italy and about 70 percent of the enterprise fixed-line market in Italy.

FastWeb is now able to serve national enterprises, which makes it a significant factor in this market for the first time. Previously, it served local and regional business applications as well as consumers.

FastWeb won two large public networking applications in Italy based on its network expansion. The company stated that other large enterprises are starting to consider it to support their network deployments.

The company is continuing to aggressively go after the consumer market in Italy. It is using unbundled ADSL and ADSL-2+ as its primary technology for consumer applications.

FastWeb’s offers only SD video offerings at this time. It does not plan to introduce HD services in 2006. It expects that Italy will lag behind France and Germany in introducing HD services. Both of these companies are planning to introduce HD services in 2006.

FastWeb continues to increase its subscriber base, adding 80 thousand new subscribers in the first quarter of 2006. Its residential subscriber base is now about 675 thousand subscribers, with 160 thousand IP TV subscribers.

The number of IP TV subscribers has remained stable for the last couple of years. It had a successful promotion in 2003 based on the availability of football in its offering that generated a significant number of new subscriptions. Many of these new subscribers have cancelled their subscriptions and have been replaced by new subscribers. Increased satellite competition and new competition from digital terrestrial have also made it more difficult for FastWeb to acquire IP TV subscribers.

FastWeb’s overall customer spending continues a slow decline, primarily due to competitive pressures and the introduction of new services. FastWeb’s video customer spending is fairly stable with about a 3 percent decline in the first quarter.

FastWeb finds that there is less demand in the Italian market for higher speed data services. It is currently offering an upgrade from ADSL to ADSL-2+ for a one time charge of €80 and no increase in monthly fees. The demand for this upgrade has been modest.

FastWeb has no plans to upgrade its network beyond ADSL-2+ at this time. It expects that ADSL-2+ should support subscriber demands for HD services and higher speed data services. Telecom Italia has announced a plan to deploy VDSL, which may put some competitive pressure on FastWeb.

FastWeb’s first response to the Telecom Italia VDSL deployment will likely be to further promote its ADSL-2+ offering. This is a low cost approach that can provide an immediate result.

In the long run, it is likely that FastWeb will expand its FTTH deployment to counter VDSL. FTTH is technically superior to VDSL, which will give FastWeb a significant competitive advantage over Telecom Italia. FastWeb does not have the wiring cabinets located close to the subscriber that Telecom Italia has. These wiring cabinets provide the infrastructure for a fiber to the node VDSL deployment. A direct FTTH approach should be significantly less costly than trying to duplicate Telecom Italia’s fiber to the node VDSL approach.

The fact that FastWeb’s IP TV subscriber base has been flat for the last two years shows the difficulties that IP TV service providers are likely to experience as the competitive environment changes.

Deutsche Telekom Rollout
May 2006

We had two meetings with groups in Deutsche Telekom (DT) that are involved with its IP TV rollout. It had announced that it would deploy VDSL and IP TV in 10 cities in Germany in time to show the World Cup in HD in June of this year.

In May, it made the HD IP TV service available to several dozen friendly homes in time for the start of the World Cup. This is more of a technical trial than a market rollout. Current plans are to rollout the service commercially in these 10 cities in July.

While the VDSL rollout appears to be on schedule, all is not well with the Microsoft IPTV Edition Software that DT will use. We were told that it still does not operate reliably in the lab.

The public broadcasters in Germany, ARD and ZDF, are threatening to boycott the DT service. These broadcasters are protesting that Microsoft’s software is incompatible with some important European TV standards.

We also heard concerns that the Microsoft software does not provide sufficient opportunities for differentiation to permit DT to make a wholesale IP TV offering. There is some discussion that DT might deploy a second middleware platform for its wholesale customers.

In some good news for DT, the German Cabinet passed a bill that exempts DT’s VDSL network from unbundling, which will give DT a significant advantage over its broadband competitors and will give it a unique ability to provide HD IP TV services.

It does not appear that the DT IP TV network is ready for prime time yet. The technical issues with the Microsoft software clearly must be resolved. DT also has to resolve its content issues. It will clearly need all of the important broadcast channels from the start of the service.

The European Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) issued a report Multiple Play: Pricing and Policy Trends. This report looks at the pricing for bundled service that include voice, data, and video services. It includes an analysis of 25 European countries plus the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Korea.

The report identifies Free in France as offering the least expensive triple play package with unlimited voice calling at $33 U.S. Its analysis stated that a similar package from Comcast in the U.S. would cost $150.

The report also stated that Softbank in Japan offers the least expensive triple play package with per minute voice charges at $29 per month. The price for a similar bundle from Telefonica in Spain is $96 per month.

FastWeb Enhances Service
April 2006

FastWeb the competitive IP TV carrier in Italy announced several enhancements to its service in April.

FastWeb uses ADSL-2+ to deliver a data service that supports broadband data speeds of 20 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream. Existing broadband subscribers can upgrade to the new higher performance for a one time charge of €80.

FastWeb also introduced a network PVR service that it calls REPLAYtv that provides access to the previous three days programming on the free channels that it broadcasts. The REPLAYtv is included at no extra cost in its On Tv video on demand service, which costs €8 per month.

FastWeb also announced recent agreements with Sony, Columbia, and Paramount for additional video on demand content. This supplements the content that it now offers from Universal, Dreamworks, Medusa, Buena Vista, Disney, 20th Century Fox, Mikado, Rai Cinema, and Instituto Luce.

AT&T's Position
April 2006

Jeff Weber the VP who runs the IP TV project at AT&T stated at NAB that it will add 20 more markets by the end of 2006. It now offers 200 channels with video on demand in San Antonio today. It will use MPEG-4 do deliver video content. AT&T also stated separately that its San Antonio market trial would start in June 2006.

AT&T plans to add HD and DVRs in 2006 along with new set-top boxes and upgrades to its Microsoft software. It will also offer interactive features such as voting and games.

AT&T had stated last year that its market rollout would begin early in 2006. These announcements appear to be about a six month slip in AT&T’s IP TV service rollout.

Will AT&T Back Off IPTV
April 2006

inkEquity Partners analystAnton Wahlman believes AT&T will scale back its Project Lightspeed deployment, because its 25-megabit-per-second speeds will not be sufficient to compete with cable.

He believes AT&T will put greater emphasis on its Homezone joint venture with EchoStar that combines satellites to deliver broadcast content and DSL to download movies to a hard disk on the set-top box.

Wahlman believes that AT&T will launch IP TV services in a handful of cities, but will only pass about one-half as many homes as originally planned. He expects that AT&T will switch from VDSL-2 at 25 megabits per second to possibly faster versions of VDSL2 running on shorter loops with potential for as much as 100 megabits per second.

While Wahlman makes a good point, since AT&T’s VDSL strategy will not compete with cable’s DOCSIS 3.0, we expect that problems such as instability in the Microsoft software and the availability of MPEG-4 SD and HD set-top boxes may be significant in 2006. We expect that AT&T may slow down the announced pace of fiber to the node deployments announced in December 2005. Installing 3 million homes passed in 2006, 6 million in 2007, and 9 million in 2009.

SBC to Acquire BellSouth
March 2006

SBC has agreed to acquire BellSouth for $67 billion. After the merger the two companies will operate under the AT&T name with AT&T’s CED Ed Whitacre serving as chairman and CEO. BellSouth’s CEO Duane Ackerman will serve as chairman and CEO of BellSouth operations for a transition period following the merger. The deal is expected to close within 12 months.

It is not clear how this will affect the companies IP TV plans. We expect that AT&T will move forward with its Project Lightspeed. We expect that BellSouth will adopt the Project Lightspeed architecture, which may not cause much delay in its IP TV plans, since AT&T was already lagging.

This will have the biggest effect on companies that were expecting to provide equipment to support BellSouth’s IP TV deployment. It is likely that this will have a negative affect on Tellabs’ FTTC system sales.

Tandberg Acquires SkyStream
March 2006

Tandberg completed its acquisition of SkyStream. This merger moves Tandberg from number 4 globally to number 2 after Tut, which has a commanding lead due the large number of its deployments in small U.S. Telcos. Tandberg is now number 1 in Asia, number 2 in Europe, and number 2 in North America. Harmonic is number 1 in Europe and Tut is number 1 in North America.

Alcatel and Lucent Merge
March 2006

Alcatel and Lucent have agreed to merge. The combined company will be number one globally in wireline and number two in mobile technologies.

The resulting company will be given a new name and will be 60 percent owned by Alcatel stockholders and 40 percent owned by Lucent stockholders. It will be headquartered in Paris.

This merger will give the resulting company the number commanding lead and the one position in the IP TV market. It will also be number one in Europe, number two in North America, and number five in Asia according to the numbers in our March 2006 Market Leader Report.

Achieving the number one position in IP TV is a good thing, but it is not nearly enough to justify a merger of this scale on its own. IP TV is one part of a full portfolio of wireline and wireline products and services.

Mergers Close
February 2006

The mergers between Cisco and Scientific Atlanta, Motorola and Kreatel, Ericsson and Marconi, and Calix and Optical Solutions closed this month.

The Motorola/Kreatel merger had the most effect and moved Motorola into the number one position in the IP TV set-top box market as measured in our latest Market Leader report. Kreatel’s strong position in Europe complements Motorola’s strong position in North America.

The Cisco/Scientific Atlanta merger combines Cisco’s strength in the aggregation and backbone networks with Scientific Atlanta’s strength in headends and set-top boxes. While Scientific Atlanta helps Cisco in the cable market today, it should improve its position in the IP TV market as well by giving it the ability to address a broader set of IP TV network issues.

The Ericsson acquisition brings some benefits in the IP TV market, but does not significantly improve Ericsson’s position in this market. It does gain significant optical networking capability from the merger.

The Calix/Optical Solutions merger improves Calix’s position in the U.S. small telco market.

As we have said before, we believe that this is the start. Read about Tandberg and Skystream and the Nortel/Huawei joint venture below. We believe that these M&A activities will continue through 2006 and 2007.

Who are the IPTV Leaders?
Feburary 2006

MRG’s new IPTV Market Leader report, now available, gives the position of about 60 different companies in four different regional markets and globally. These companies are grouped into six different product categories. MRG has added a new ranking system to thisreport for each of the 30 market sectors. The number one company in each global market and each product category are given in the table below:

NEC is number one in Access Systems due to its inclusion in the PCCW deployment in Hong Kong. ECI is number two globally and number one in Europe.

Tut remains the number one company globally and in North America in IPTV Video Headends due to its strong position in the U.S. independent telco market.

In Video-in-Demand systems, entone is the number one company globally and in Asia due to its deployment at PCCW. Alcatel is number two globally and number one in Europe.

Motorola is number one in Set-top Boxes globally as well as in North America and Europe due to its recent acquisition of Kreatel. Yuxing is number two globally and number one in Europe due to its inclusion PCCW’s network.

Thomson/Thales is number one globally in IPTV Middleware and in Europe, due to its inclusion in France Telecom’s network. Orca is number two globally and number one in Asia.

In IPTV Content Protection systems, Viaccess is number one globally and in Europe, due to its inclusion in France Telecom’s network. Widevine is number two globally and number one in Asia and North America.

This report is based on a database of 370 service providers globally that have some level of IP TV activity underway. More than 200 of these companies are small independent telcos in the U.S.

Tanberg TV to Acquire Skystream?
February 2006

Tandberg TV has signed an agreement to acquire Skystream. Both companies produce video headend equipment. Tandberg TV has been focusing on high end, high quality applications while Skystream has provided a more cost effective system. Tandberg stated that it was considering developing a system more like Skystream’s, but decided that acquisition was the better course of action.

Tandberg TV stated that it has focused on tier 1 carriers and that Skystream has focused on the tier 3 carriers in the U.S. This is consistent with the view of the two companies in our latest Market Leader report, but we have seen that Skystream does have a significant position in both Europe and Asia.

Looking at this merger from the perspective of this Market Leader report on a pro forma basis, the combination would retain the number two position that Skystream now occupies, still way behind Tut in terms of channels deployed. Skystream’s number one position in Asia would be strengthened significantly. The merger would put the combination into strong competition for the number one position with Harmonic in Europe.

While this merger clearly strengthens the position of both companies, it is not clear that it will be able to survive as a standalone entity over the long run. Video encoding is a specialized technology that will resist further combination, but the difficulties of integrating IP TV systems and the positioning for service provider business may generate significant pressures for further combination.

Motorola to Acquire Kreatel?
January 2006

Motorola has agreed to acquire the Swedish set-top box manufacturer Kreatel. Kreatel is included in significant IPTV deployments in Europe that include Telefonica in Spain, TeliaSonera in Sweden, and KPN in The Netherlands.

Motorola stated that it was particularly interested in the set-top box APIs that Kreatel has developed as well as its hybrid set-top boxes that support both IPTV and digital terrestrial services. Motorola also expects the Kreatel development center to become an important R&D resource for its IPTV products and strategies.

This acquisition is in line with our predictions that M&A activity in the IPTV market will increase in 2006. This acquisition brings important technologies to Motorola as well as much better access to the European market. We have been saying for some time that Motorola needs to expand to the global market.

This acquisition will help Kreatel to scale to the next level. The large companies are taking most of the business from the large service providers today. Kreatel as part of Motorola will be able to compete more effectively for this business.

Korean Broadcasters Still Have No Content Deal with IPTV Companies June 2009

Microsoft's Virtualization—Will It Make Mediaroom More Efficient? June 2009

U.S. Supreme Court Will Not Hear Arguments in the Case of Whether Cablevision's Network PVR Violates Copyright Laws June 2009

BSNL To Invest In Wireless Broadband, 3G, IPTV, WiMax and Mobile Services June 2009

Avail Media TVN May 2009

TalkTalk Buys Tiscali May 2009

Internet Video News May 2009

Verizon and AT&T Gain 583K Subs in 1Q/2009 April 2009

Move Networks Acquired Inuk Networks April 2009

Comcast's Big Internet Video Play April 2009

FTTH Grows Worldwide March 2009

Zillion TV Steps Into the Crowded OTT Space March 2009

News Corp and Permira Completed Buyout of NDS February 2009

U.S. Gets $7 Billion Broadband Stimulus February 2009

Bharti Airtel Launches IPTV in India February 2009

Orders For Communications Gear Up January 2009

Swisscom Investment in Firecomms January 2009

Analyst Comment: 8 Reasons Why Standalone Internet TV Will Not Succeed January 2009

2008

AT&T Now Has Over 1 Million Subscribers December 2008

Worldwide Broadband Market Climbs 19% December 2008

Orange France Telecom Looking to Develop an Application Store December 2008

VUDU Opening Up Its Platform to Outside Developers December 2008

Amino Acquires Tilgin's STB Division November 2008

TiVo Made a Deal With Netflix November 2008

Logitech Acquires SightSpeed November 2008

IPTV Tops Cable in Customer Satisfaction October 2008

Shifts in MRG Market Leader Report October 2008

Ericsson Goes IMS with Sonaecom September 2008

SecureMedia Wins Big in U.K. September 2008

Pakistan Launches First IPTV Service August 2008

Colombia’s UNE Launches First IPTV Service August 2008

Amazon Introduced an Online Video Store July 2008

NEC Corp. Acquired OSS Vendor NetCracker July 2008

Cisco is Acquiring Pure Networks July 2008

What Network TV Would Like From IPTV July 2008

Hong Kong Plans to Sell 45% June 2008

Sony Broadband Connectivity: Evolutionary, Not Revolutionary June 2008

Swisscom Getting Past Start-Up Troubles June 2008

IPTV Subscribers Growing to 92.8 Million in 2012 May 2008

Conexant Selling Assets to NXP and CopperGate May 2008

Bell Aliant Chooses Corinex for Home Networking May 2008

Deutsche Telekom Chooses JDSU for IPTV Monitoring April 2008

FTTH Growing in North America April 2008

Alcatel-Lucent Acquiring ReachView Technologies March 2008

MPEG LA Suing Amino March 2008

Entriq Acquiring DayPort March 2008

Roo Group Acquiring Kamera March 2008

Viaccess Acquired Orca Interactive March 2008

NEC Re-enters IPTV Business March 2008

French Telecom Operators Launching Soft At Home Middleware February 2008

Survey Shows Video Quality Critical to IPTV Success February 2008

Will 2008 Be The Year of HD? January 2008

Verizon Hits 1 Million Subs – Looking to the Big Apple January 2008

Current Media's IPO for $100 Million January 2008

EU Chooses DVB-H Mobile TV Standard December 2007

Mobile TV: Global Standards Review & Forecast for Infrastrucuture & Handsets - 2007 to 2011 December 2007

MRG's Top 10 IPTV Drivers for 2007 December 2007

German IPTV Market Heats Up November 2007

Bell Canada Postpones IPTV Service November 2007

Internet Video: Threat or Opportunity for IPTV Operators October 2007

Verizon vs. Cable Operators October 2007

Arris Acquires C-Cor for $730 Million September 2007

Avail Buys Kasenna's ViewNow Subsidiary September 2007

Alcatel-Lucent Buys Tamblin September 2007

Independent Hollywood Studios Consider Simultaneous Release August 2007

SecureMedia Acquired By Cavalier Telephone August 2007

iPhone Video Support July 2007

Chile Goes IPTV July 2007

Symmetricom Unveils QoS Probe July 2007

IMS Playing Increasing Role in Converged Services June 2007

SES Americom Unveils IP-Prime Turnkey IPTV Solution June 2007

Internet Video for IPTV Service Providers: A Preview June 2007

BSkyB Talking to Tiscali; Drops PVR Fees June 2007

Motorola to Acquire Modulus Video May 2007

Avail Media Gets Funding May 2007

Comcast Drops Microsoft from Cable Boxes May 2007

HD: A Must-Have for IPTV in North America April 2007

Packet Vision Looks to IPTV Advertising April 2007

Iceland's IPTV Market March 2007

Korean Broadcasters Still Have No Content Deal with IPTV Companies
June 2009

Microsoft's Virtualization—Will It Make Mediaroom More Efficient?
June 2009

U.S. Supreme Court Will Not Hear Arguments in the Case of Whether Cablevision's Network PVR Violates Copyright Laws
June 2009

BSNL To Invest In Wireless Broadband, 3G, IPTV, WiMax and Mobile Services
June 2009

Avail Media TVN
May 2009

TalkTalk Buys Tiscali
May 2009

Internet Video News
May 2009

Verizon and AT&T Gain 583K Subs in 1Q/2009
April 2009

Move Networks Acquired Inuk Networks
April 2009

Comcast's Big Internet Video Play
April 2009

FTTH Grows Worldwide
March 2009

Zillion TV Steps Into the Crowded OTT Space
March 2009

News Corp and Permira Completed Buyout of NDS
February 2009

U.S. Gets $7 Billion Broadband Stimulus
February 2009

Bharti Airtel Launches IPTV in India
February 2009

Orders For Communications Gear Up
January 2009

Swisscom Investment in Firecomms
January 2009

Analyst Comment: 8 Reasons Why Standalone Internet TV Will Not Succeed
January 2009

AT&T Now Has Over 1 Million Subscribers
December 2008

Worldwide Broadband Market Climbs 19%
December 2008

Orange France Telecom Looking to Develop an Application Store
December 2008

VUDU Opening Up Its Platform to Outside Developers
December 2008

Amino Acquires Tilgin's STB Division
November 2008

TiVo Made a Deal With Netflix
November 2008

Logitech Acquires SightSpeed
November 2008

IPTV Tops Cable in Customer Satisfaction
October 2008

Shifts in MRG Market Leader Report
October 2008

Ericsson Goes IMS with Sonaecom
September 2008

SecureMedia Wins Big in U.K.
September 2008

Pakistan Launches First IPTV Service
August 2008

Colombia’s UNE Launches First IPTV Service
August 2008

Amazon Introduced an Online Video Store
July 2008

NEC Corp. Acquired OSS Vendor NetCracker
July 2008

Cisco is Acquiring Pure Networks
July 2008

What Network TV Would Like From IPTV
July 2008

Hong Kong Plans to Sell 45%
June 2008

Sony Broadband Connectivity: Evolutionary, Not Revolutionary
June 2008

Swisscom Getting Past Start-Up Troubles
June 2008

IPTV Subscribers Growing to 92.8 Million in 2012
May 2008

Conexant Selling Assets to NXP and CopperGate
May 2008

Bell Aliant Chooses Corinex for Home Networking
May 2008

Deutsche Telekom Chooses JDSU for IPTV Monitoring
April 2008

FTTH Growing in North America
April 2008

Alcatel-Lucent Acquiring ReachView Technologies
March 2008

MPEG LA Suing Amino
March 2008

Entriq Acquiring DayPort
March 2008

Roo Group Acquiring Kamera
March 2008

Viaccess Acquired Orca Interactive
March 2008

NEC Re-enters IPTV Business
March 2008

French Telecom Operators Launching Soft At Home Middleware
February 2008

Survey Shows Video Quality Critical to IPTV Success
February 2008

Will 2008 Be The Year of HD?
January 2008

Verizon Hits 1 Million Subs – Looking to the Big Apple
January 2008

Current Media's IPO for $100 Million
January 2008

EU Chooses DVB-H Mobile TV Standard
December 2007

Mobile TV: Global Standards Review & Forecast for Infrastrucuture & Handsets - 2007 to 2011
December 2007

MRG's Top 10 IPTV Drivers for 2007
December 2007

German IPTV Market Heats Up
November 2007

Bell Canada Postpones IPTV Service
November 2007

Internet Video: Threat or Opportunity for IPTV Operators
October 2007

Verizon vs. Cable Operators
October 2007

Arris Acquires C-Cor for $730 Million
September 2007

Avail Buys Kasenna's ViewNow Subsidiary
September 2007

Alcatel-Lucent Buys Tamblin
September 2007

Independent Hollywood Studios Consider Simultaneous Release
August 2007

SecureMedia Acquired By Cavalier Telephone
August 2007

iPhone Video Support
July 2007

Chile Goes IPTV
July 2007

Symmetricom Unveils QoS Probe
July 2007

IMS Playing Increasing Role in Converged Services
June 2007

SES Americom Unveils IP-Prime Turnkey IPTV Solution
June 2007

Internet Video for IPTV Service Providers: A Preview
June 2007

BSkyB Talking to Tiscali; Drops PVR Fees
June 2007

Motorola to Acquire Modulus Video
May 2007

Avail Media Gets Funding
May 2007

Comcast Drops Microsoft from Cable Boxes
May 2007

HD: A Must-Have for IPTV in North America
April 2007

Packet Vision Looks to IPTV Advertising
April 2007

Iceland's IPTV Market
March 2007

Cablevision Loses Network DVR Lawsuit
March 2007