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Broadband Access
Thomson Predicts 75 m IPTV Users By 2009
IMS and ‘Bundled’ Offers Spur Growth of IP Market
by Iain Morris
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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