There has been lot of talk about India being a lucrative market for most of the upcoming services in the telecom domain and especially those related to convergence. But there is one service where India does not find a mention among the top markets. The service is Internet Protocol Television (IPTV).

TelecomTiger recently went through a demonstration of IPTV service offered by Aksh Optifibre and it emerged that the service providers are indeed hampered by the lack of comprehensive policies related to the service in India which makes it difficult for them to forge content tie-ups and thereby affects content aggregation.

Aksh is one of the early starters for IPTV services in India having entered into deals with MTNL and BSNL for IPTV services. It is credited with driving the uptake for IPTV services even against numerous bottlenecks. The company claims to have roped in 10,000 subscribers for its IPTV services with MTNL. It is expecting to notch up 40,000 subscribers by the end of current year as the tie-up with BSNL has tremendously increased its addressable market.

Aksh presently offers set top boxes of UTStarcom as part of the connection. The menu bar of the Electronic Progamme Guide (EPG) of

Aksh has the following options:

• TV Channels
• Time Shift TV
• Video on Demand
• Karaoke
• New Arrivals
• My Favourites
• Games
• Self Help

TV Channels provides information on the various channels on offer. Currently Aksh has more than 120 channels on offer to its IPTV subscribers. The channels include a mix of free to air and paid channels.

Aksh says Time Shift TV is its main differentiator as it provides a free service of recording as well as viewing programmes upto three days from its original telecast. The concept is that programmes are stored on the company’s server. Whenever subscribers opt for the service, the content is delivered from the server. The main drawback about this service is that only free-to-air channels are offered as of now. Effectively it contrasts Aksh’s claim of this being differentiator as DTH operators like Tata Sky for instance offer similar services though for a charge.

In Aksh’s case a particular subscriber can view a cricket match through the Times Shift mode only when the match is telecast on a free-to-air channel. Otherwise the time-shift mode is of no use to the subscriber.

The IPTV operator also provides Video on Demand services though currently only 200 movie contents are available. The service as of now is free of charge.

Other features include Karaoke which require external accessories to be plugged in and provide the usual karaoke applications found in music systems.  New arrivals display the latest new content available. My Favourites include saved content by the user. Games as the name suggests offers few games for the subscriber to indulge in. Self Help provides generic level of trouble shooting information related to functioning of the service.

New services in pipeline include a paid local listing (on the lines of yellow pages) where advertisers will be offered a one-minute slot for advertising. Charges would be around Rs 20,000. similarly paid listing for matrimonial services are also on offer on trial basis.

The delivery of content i.e. the quality of content displayed on the screen was found to be crystal clear. But then this is expected from any digital transmission medium.

A fact which emerged from the demonstration is that currently IPTV service providers do not have a sustainable differentiator as compared to DTH services. DTH also has the advantage of easy to procure from the consumer’s point of view as the retail network of DTH service providers is unmatched as compared to IPTV operators. For IPTV currently one has to apply through the main telecom service provider for instance MTNL and BSNL in case of Aksh.

Additionally as said earlier, IPTV providers find it difficult to aggregate content from popular paid broadcasters due to lack of policy framework. This again works to the advantage of DTH service providers who have lot more content on offer as compared to IPTV services.

IPTV service offerings need some innovation for sure. And this needs to be supported by a policy framework allowing some more services through the IPTV mode. For instance IPTV will always involve the telecom network of the operator. This network can be used to offer advanced interactivity to the end subscribers. Services like Tele-education and Tele medicine perfectly fit in IPTV domain. For the moment though, IPTV services leave a lot to be desired.