UTStarcom is riding high on broadband and IPTV uptake in the Indian market. Considered to be a formidable player in the segment, the company foresees a strong business case for IPTV services in India. UTStarcom South Asia MD, Vijay Yadav shares his view points in an exclusive interaction with TelecomTiger.

Q1) A lot has been said and written about advantages of IPTV over DTH. The advantages however have not been able to work to advantage of IPTV services where in the real scenario uptake of IPTV services as compared to DTH is very low in India. As a technology solution provider to IPTV service providers, how do you view the situation?

Ans: First of all, whenever a new technology comes in, different people have different ideas of how to position their products, and there are certain service providers who are positioning it as more superior than DTH, and in several ways, it is. However, we, as technology & solutions providers look at IPTV quite differently. From my perspective, IPTV is not a technology or a service which is competing with DTH, or for that matter with any of the other forms of TV access currently available like digital CAS, and analogue. IPTV is complementary to the current forms of services.

Besides, comparing IPTV with other forms of broadcast is not right as it would be the same as comparing mobile phone with fixedline, which people did 14 years back, when mobile phones first came. But now we have learned that you can’t compare these two products. It would be a similar case with IPTV and DTH or other forms. IPTV as a service will augment what is already there on DTH and thereby complementing it the way mobile phone complemented wireline.

Coming to your second point, uptake for IPTV is obviously lesser, since DTH as a technology has been around for more than a decade, and in India it has been available for more that 2 to 3 years. IPTV, serving a hi-end need, will initially reach to a limited numbers. For a technology in its first year, the subscriber rates for IPTV are still quite descent.

Q2) IPTV services depend a lot on uptime of broadband connectivity provided by the operators. Indian operators are not known to have satisfactory level in terms of delivery of services, revealed Trai study reports. What should be done to change this perception as well as overcome the challenge?

Ans: Broadband is deployed largely on brass-copper line and marginally on fiber. It’s a well-acknowledged fact that voice services on wireline are turning out to be more reliable as compared to wireless. With the quality of data or bits traveling on the fixedline being better than wireless, the standards are itself very high.

Compared to other countries, we definitely have a less superior quality, but the quality can be driven if more services are carried out on the wire.

Technically speaking, broadband is a pre-requisite for enabling IPTV.  However, interestingly, we feel that IPTV will drive the growth of broadband especially in India. In simple words, the market will drive the need and the need will drive better quality due to competition among service providers.

In the current scenario, when the broadband goes down or doesn’t deliver a quality up to the mark, the user in a home scenario doesn’t care much. Once users start using broadband for video services like IPTV, they won’t tolerate poor broadband connectivity and will put pressure on service providers to deliver better quality. I know of people who can tolerate their phone lines being down for half day, but not their TV for half hour. Broadband connection can be made very reliable – the technology and solutions exist; when users start absolutely insisting that it has to be always-up reliability, the service providers will start enabling.  Once the demand for quality broadband increases, it will automatically result in better services being delivered. In today’s consumer-driven market, service providers who continue to deliver sloppy services cannot survive for too long.

Q3) Another issue which is very ironical is that IPTV is mainly limited to a very limited addressable market i.e. fixedline subscribers having broadband connection though efforts are made now to reach out to even those subscribers without fixedline connection. Do you think the addressable market available now commands a viable business case for operators?

Ans: From our perspective, IPTV can be extended to two categories of people, first being the ones who already have wireline or fixedline connection, which can be addressed easily. The second category comprise of people who need the connection. In a premise, where wire is not there, as long as the wire can reach the place, it is a matter of business case to us.

For obvious reasons, India is not limited by wire which is already in place. But, if there is a business case, then people will go ahead and put in an additional wire. It brings us to the same point that I have said earlier, IPTV will drive the growth of broadband. The size of market that we’re talking about already is not small. The amount of copper lines in the country is already 70 million, though the voice users on wireline in the country are somewhere between 45-50 million. Once IPTV starts driving growth of broadband, this extra unused wire will also become more valuable. 

Furthermore, the market which we are talking about is not a small one. With IPTV offering a bouquet of features, to the extent that we believe, India doesn’t any longer need a ‘$100 PC’ to bridge over the digital divide, as we already have ‘$100 TV’ in the form of IPTV that brings the power of interactivity to your humble TV remote itself! Therefore, people will move to wire and opt for broadband just to experience the benefits of IPTV.

Q4) Globally PCCW is considered to be the ideal case study where the launch of IPTV services helped the company in not only keeping a check on drop in fixedline services but rather witnessing addition of new subscribers for the services. Do you foresee such a possibility happening in India especially in case of BSNL?

Ans: PCCW is