IPTV: TV Goes the Data Way

Canada’s largest telecommunications and digital TV provider Bell Canada, plans to be the first telecommunications company in Canada and among the first in the world to trial the delivery of services over an IP-broadband network using IPTV Technology being developed by Microsoft. Closer home, Reliance Infocomm, the largest private-sector enterprise in the country, is also looking at offering next-generation TV services in the near future. An important step in this direction was taken when Microsoft and Reliance Infocomm announced plans to work together to jointly create, test and deliver, next-generation IP-based television service using
IPTV. 

This new technology will help Reliance in maximizing the value of its network says Moshe Lichtman, corporate vice president, Microsoft TV division. Not only will it help in maximizing the network value, it will also help Reliance to leverage on its nationwide high-speed infrastructure to deliver next-generation television services.

The company is encashing on its catchline–A new way of life–and is creating a 60,000 km terabit capacity optical fiber backbone connecting 600 cities and towns in India. In future, Reliance also plans to expand the capacity in future to deploy 116,000 km optical fiber network covering 640,000 villages and 2,500 towns and cities. With a domestic backbone in place and an international backbone coming in place with Flag’s acquisition, subject to regulatory clearances, the company is well poised to provide bandwidth hungry applications in the future. 

IP TV Technology Demo
IP TV Highlights
l	Multimedia program guide with rich graphics, animation, and clear text
l	Virtual picture-in-picture that moves tuning out of the TV or set top box hardware and into the network, enabling the delivery of two or more TV streams
l	Instant channel changing with Windows Media 9 video format provides rapid display of programming measured at two-tenths of a second
l	Windows Media 9 encoded standard definition video at an average bit rate of 1-1.5 Mbps
l	Mini-Guide with integrated picture-in-picture

The company is moving as per plan. In the first phase, the company has already launched wireless services and has triggered a mobile revolution in the country with a subscriber base of 3.56 million. In the second phase, the company is planning to usher an enterprise network revolution by providing 100 Mbps Ethernet links to half a million enterprise buildings to be further extended to 10 million buildings. In the third phase, the Reliance is planning for a consumer convergence revolution and is looking at providing high speed Ethernet links to 80 million homes and providing every home with television channels, high speed telephony, audio conferencing, video conferencing, and video on demand. The tie-up with Microsoft will help Infocomm realize its dream of providing convergence services to every household in the country. 

The company is enlarging its base by first focusing on voice or telephony services. Once the services stabilize, the company will try to focus on corporate customers by providing 100 Mbps Ethernet links, mainly for data services. Further, the company will focus on video services and maximize its revenue from the same infrastructure. The company is also, focusing on how to get more ARPU from the existing customer by providing voice, data, and video services at a slightly incremental value in future. But all this will happen only if Reliance can provide good quality service and also increase its brand recall in telecom which has taken a beating and is improving slowly. 

The new relationship will help Reliance test the benefits of technologies such as Windows Media 9 Series, Microsoft.Net, and Microsoft Windows Server 2003. All these technologies will be integrated giving new dimension to video services. The IP TV solution is designed to combine industry and Microsoft innovations to better support the services that Pay TV operators offer today, including standard and high definition channels, on demand programming, and interactive program guides, with enhanced features such as instant channel changing. The solution will also enable new generation services that include picture in picture functionality using multiple video steams. All this can change the way we define video services.

Pravin Prashant