There has been lot of buzz around the IPTV potential in India especially in the context of tripe-play service potential for integrated service providers. But in India the service remains pathetically placed.

TRAI’s figures for June 2009 show that the IPTV service providers could notch up just Rs.0.87 crore in revenues during the quarter. With service providers such as Aksh, HFCL’s myway and Bharti’s digital IPTV offering their services, one wonders what would be the break even time for such players.

Compare the revenues of IPTV to the total revenues of Rs 2039.51 crore earned from internet based services. Even other services which are considered to be part of internet services fared far better than IPTV services. Dial-up subscribers still contribute as much as Rs.138.52 crore in a single quarter. Leased services contributed Rs 454.09 crore while Broadband services topped the list with contribution of Rs 1221.06 crore.

VoIP services which surprisingly are not aggressively marked in India by the players accounted for Rs 10.23 crore in June 2009. In fact the usage of the services is on a positive side with June quarter recording 131.94 million minutes of usage as compared to 131.63 million minutes in March. 

The revenues for IPTV services are disappointing because there has been lot of investment made by service providers to enable delivery of such services. BSNL in particular was banking on services such as IPTV to keep a check on falling wireline subscribers. BSNL offers IPTV services from Aksh as well as myway.

With revenues of Rs.87 lakh for a quarter the IPTV industry is no doubt in a loss and reeling. To compound the woes, there are lot many players involved in the value-chain of delivery of services such as the IPTV service provider,, the telecom operator on whose network the services are delivered and also the content providers.

Globally IPTV has witnessed mixed response. But PCCW has been able to use IPTV to trun around its fortune. The Hong-Kong based operator was faced with the dilemma of dwindling wireline subscribers. But with the introduction of IPTV services, the operator not only managed to overcome the issue but also started registering good revenues.

Earlier last month, TelecomTiger, citing a research from Screen Digest had reported that IPTV services were almost non-existent in the Indian pay-TV market.

Indian IPTV players have their task cut out and that is to push for rapid surge in uptake of services. Only then can they hope of roping in reasonable revenues.