31 August 2006

WHILE the jury is still out on how fast consumers in the region will take to watching television over a broadband connection, what is certain is that the regional Internet-Protocol Television (IPTV) scene is set to grow in the next 12 months, with Singapore as one of the countries leading the charge.

Concluding this was a recent Credit Suisse report on the Asia IPTV sector, which said that while Hong Kong currently led the region in IPTV deployments, Singapore, Korea and Taiwan were likely to feel the 'full impact' of IPTV deployments in the next 12 months.

Hong Kong has some 400,000 paying IPTV customers and this is expected to grow to 750,000 by the end of this year. However, Sean Quek, the analyst at Credit Suisse who led the team producing the report, noted that 'restrictive censorship, high-quality free-to-air programmes, and the small population' were factors that could hinder the development of IPTV content in Singapore.

The report also noted that growth forecasts for IPTV subscriptions differed substantially. It cited the forecast of research house IDC, which has forecast the number of Asia-Pacific IPTV subscribers to exceed 20 million by 2009 and compared it to research from another firm Media Partners Asia (MPA), which projected just 4.6 million IPTV subscribers in the region by 2009.

Mr Quek also noted in the report that telcos could be the 'key winners' with IPTV. 'While we believe that the launch of IPTV in Asia will inevitably result in start-up losses for telcos, by using IPTV as a differentiated service, they should benefit from lower subscriber churn and marketing costs,' said Mr Quek in the report.

'Content providers would be the key beneficiaries of the expected rise in distribution platforms, with the more aggressive bidding between competing distributors and potential growth in overall subscriber base,' he added.

The IPTV scene in Singapore has been a hive of activity this year. Just a week ago, Singapore-based entertainment company, Anytime Pte Ltd said that it will be rolling out its on-demand IPTV service in phases over the next six to 12 months in the Asia- Pacific region, with countries such as Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, Korea and Taiwan among the first to get the service.

Privately-held Anytime counts conglomerates such as Intel, Fox Media Services and Warner Brothers as its shareholders.

Earlier this week, the Media Development Authority (MDA) of Singapore said it had awarded Reeltime Media - a major Australian broadband TV service player - a five-year video-on-demand (VOD) licence. Reeltime said that it will offer its service by Christmas this year. It will first launch the service to PCs, followed by a set-top box service within 6-12 months of the PC service launch.

MDA also said that it has issued a six-month IPTV trial service licence to OBSTV Asia, a Singapore-based media company which is an offshoot of Japan's OBSTV and aims to be a major provider of Japanese and Korean IPTV content in Asia. It said that it was trialing its service for six months before launching it commercially.

In June, MDA also said that there were IPTV trials for high definition TV (HDTV) broadcasts with local telcos.

Local IPTV pioneer M2B World earlier this month said that it has already signed up about 2,000 customers for its $29.90 per month IPTV service, which offers 55 on-demand channels.