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U.S. prefer to watch TV online
By siliconindia
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Saturday, 02 August 2008, 01:17 IST
Bangalore: One fifth of U.S. people prefer the online TV to their own television sets, while the trend in India is yet to gain momentum. Mobile TV, which is to be launched in India, is expected to have a market worth $360 million by the end of this year in the country, as per a report by Springboard Research. Moreover, there is also Internet protocol television (IPTV) that has stepped into the Indian scenario, with MTNL being the first to plunge while other players like Reliance and Airtel reviews the market.
However, unlike in U.S., there are various setbacks awaiting these services in India ranging from the broadband bandwidth to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) guidelines. "The low broadband penetration, low disposable incomes of households, lack of telco content expertise will act as a dampener for the roll out in India," says Neha Gupta, Senior Research Analyst with Gartner. Apart from that, there is the difficulty of ignorance that exists regarding the service.
Moreover, online TV sites like wwwitv.com while gives above 90 channels for the U.S., in accordance with locations, only 21 channels are offered for India. Even for rolling out the mobile TV service, TRAI has set guidelines, providing two routes. One being operated by using the telecom network with spectrum already allotted to Unified Access Service License (UASL) and Cellular Mobile Telephone Service (CMTS) licensees, and the other using broadcasting method using separate spectrum, which will require a separate license. IPTV operates on a premise that?s different from traditional satellite or cable television in that only selected programming and on-demand content are delivered to the consumer. With satellite and cable, all channels are being pushed all the time to the consumer?s home or mobile rather than on a per-selection basis.
According to a study done by ABI Research, total subscribers for IPTV may exceed 120 million by 2010 with Asia Pacific constituting roughly 47 per cent of the total subscribers worldwide.
