IPTV - 3.6 million users worldwide!

The year 2006 ended with about 3.6 million IPTV viewers worldwide, according to a new study by U.K. research and consulting house Canalsys - and most of those viewers live in Europe.
That number, admittedly a drop in the buck, has set the stage for what could be explosive growth this year.
Canalys figures the 3.6 million subscribers yielded about $1.3 billion in annualized revenues (TelecomWeb calculates that equates to a reasonable $30 per month on average for an IPTV subscription). It figures about two-thirds of the subscribers in the world last year were in Europe, and that 60 percent of the European market was cornered by just five providers, "but the rush of service launches by new entrants in 2006 means that there are numerous companies with only a few thousand subscribers each."
It listed the top three as PCCW, with an 18.2 percent share; France Telecom, with 16.8 percent; and Free Telecom, at 14 percent. Telefonica and Fastweb round out the top five, but with single-digit market shares.
While Europe has set the IPTV pace so far, the research house predicts that, this year, both North America and the Far East - where only Hong Kong has significant IPTV so far - will begin catching up. "Growth will come from emerging markets such as China and India, following large investments into IPTV deployments there," Canalsys notes. "Australia is also finally moving into the commercial phase of its IPTV offerings, which will lead to fast rollouts of services in 2007."
"North America will be another major growth area, with AT&T and Verizon already pushing nationwide rollouts of IPTV services," it adds - although not making a clear distinction between IPTV and the analog service Verizon is actually offering over FiOS so far.
In a caveat to the IPTV industry, Canalsys warns that "the major threats" for many IPTV service providers will be the quality of their networks and the ability of IPTV systems to scale - an ability that remains unproved.
"IPTV networks will quickly become the most complex and bandwidth-intensive that have ever existed," says Canalys Vice President Alessandra Fitzpatrick. "Many service providers have invested millions of euros on network upgrades, but it remains unproved whether IPTV networks can scale into the millions without performance degrading and response times slowing or even collapsing altogether. Another infrastructure challenge is that service providers will quickly have to learn how to manage multiple billing systems and content across large server farms and storage area networks while maintaining the highest quality of service."
Canalys Senior Analyst Nadia Griffiths also warns IPTV providers that "2007 will see the competitive landscape become even fiercer as IPTV services from established service providers will be challenged by aggressively priced alternatives from Web TV, cable, satellite and content companies. These are all contenders for a share of the limited wallet of most consumers."


Source - Telecomweb