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Thomson Predicts 75 m IPTV Users By 2009

IMS and ‘Bundled’ Offers Spur Growth of IP Market

      

Almost one third of an estimated 250 million broadband users in the world today could be subscribing to IPTV services within the next three years, according to equipment vendor Thomson.


Speaking at the Broadband World Forum in Paris today, Jacques Dunogué, senior executive vice president with Thomson, was in an upbeat mood about the potential of IP to revolutionise the international communications market.

Spurring that revolution will be the continued investment in IMS, said Dunogué -- to which Thomson remains fully committed -- and the service providers that are able to ‘bundle’ more IP-based services for the same fee. He cited the example of Iliad in France, which has been adding new features to its consumer package whilst continuing to charge no more than €30 per month.

Dunogué also refuted suggestions that competition from the cable community could hamper the adoption of IPTV. “Cable operators don’t have an equivalent which is as interactive and that will actually push people to upgrade the quality of services,” he said.

Thomson made a series of IP-related announcements at today’s conference, including the news that Italian operator Fastweb has selected the manufacturer’s VoIP residential gateway to facilitate the deployment of its multiplay services. Thomson claims that the gateway is capable of enabling additional IP-based services, including IPTV.

But with some analysts present sceptical about the market for so-called ‘converged’ IP offers, such as Orange’s recently launched Unik service, Dunogué was forced to attribute the low level of take-up so far to ‘technical problems’ that plagued early innovators like BT Fusion.

“I think the technical problems are far behind us,” he said. “I have no doubt that the market will pick up.”

Dunogué was also challenged to defend Thomson’s position as a leading provider of IPTV set-top boxes.

“We were at the forefront with the first generation [of set-top boxes] but the market was disappointing,” he said. “We are now starting to ship large quantities of next-generation set- top boxes.”

The manufacturer now claims to serve the largest installed base of IPTV users in Europe at just under half a million.

On potential barriers to service adoption, Dunogué said that the greatest concern remains the mobile TV space, where ongoing regulatory uncertainty regarding the availability and allocation of spectrum in Europe was frustrating progress. The fixed-line market was less of a worry, said Dunogué, despite regulation that is arguably restricting the rollout of fibre networks.

“ADSL2+ is now widely available and so it’s not a problem,” he said.

He also admitted that set-top boxes had to be priced appropriately by service providers if their cost was not to adversely affect take-up.

“The winning model is folding that cost into the monthly fee. Otherwise you slow down the penetration,” he said.

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