Green signal for IPTV in India

After a long delay, Indian government has finally approved the guidelines for the provision of IPTV services in the country. Until now TV broadcasters are allowed to share their feeds only to licensed cable and DTH service providers, now after this new guidelines approval, broadcasters will provide the content to licensed IPTV service providers also. In addition to this, the cabinet also approved an amendment to policy guidelines for the downlinking of television channels, which will allow IPTV operators to demand the broadcasters to provide them content at the same price as cable and satellite TV operators.

IPTV which stands for Internet Protocol TV, is an interactive digital television service that uses high speed Internet connection for delivery instead of traditional cable wires or DTH service. Mostly it is bundled with Internet packages by the internet service providers. To use the IPTV service, customer will need a high speed internet connection along with IPTV modem and a Screen (TV/PC). Since IPTV delivers in digital form, quality of the channels delivered will be far better than the analog transmission systems. IPTV also provides new features including Video on demand, Timeshift TV, Interactive games and Interactive advertising.

The compulsory content storage clause is included in the new guidelines, which requires the service providers to store all the content in their local server for 90 days from the time of telecast. This clause will leads to number of interesting features including TimeShift TV. As the content are stored, the service providers can delivered the content on demand to the customers. Thus customers can be able to watch the content on his leisure time, pause, fast forward, rewind the content as per his convenience. Also storage of data will allow the government to check for any illegal content on a later time after it is relayed.

Currently MTNL alone provides IPTV services in India but in an inactive mode. BSNL is planning to launch the service for quite long. Private players including RCom, Bharti Airtel are all waiting for the new guidelines to be live. TRAI has earlier recommended to allow both licensed cable opeartors and DTH service providers to provide IPTV services without any additional license. It is not still clear whether the government has accepted this recommendation also as part of today’s approval. If it is accepted as it is, then there will be a very stiff competition in the space.