'We are calling IPTV by the wrong name'

Q&A: Vijay Yadav, MD, South Asia UTStarcom

The Indian arm of the US-based UTStarcom hopes to reach out to cable operators to sell more of its Internet protocol television (IPTV) solutions. In India, a bulk of the 100,000 IPTV connections — from Bharti Airtel’s to BSNL’s — have UTStarcom at the back end. However, Vijay Yadav, managing director, South Asia, UTStarcom, says calling it IPTV has held back growth of the technology that helps data or video to move over internet protocol networks. Currently IPTV solutions form 15 per cent of its undisclosed India topline and broadband forms 80 per cent. Vanita Kohli-Khandekar spoke to Yadav about the possibilities for IPTV in the structurally-flawed Indian TV market. Edited excerpts:

What is the scope for Internet protocol television (IPTV) in a market where cable TV is strong (103 million homes) and direct-to-home (DTH) is doing well (18 million and counting)?
We don’t envisage IPTV to reach the same numbers (as cable). We never viewed it as a service that competes with cable and DTH, it complements them. When a cable user moves to digital, we are very happy because he has moved up the value chain, he understands digital and will therefore understand the value of IPTV. We have started offering IPTV to last mile cable operators (LCOs) in Mumbai on an experimental basis. We are encouraging them to offer it in two TV homes, not for the TV, but for the interactive services.

Why would a cable operator want to offer IPTV?
The cable operator doesn’t want me to touch the broadcast part (read TV), that is his bread and butter. And in any case in broadcast, IP technology offers no differentiation since everyone (cable, DTH, IPTV) has the same channels on offer. It is in the interactive part where there is a value addition. So he can keep sending the broadcast signals over his cable wires and we add the interactivity bit. We are calling it (IPTV) by the wrong name. It is not about the TV but about TV messaging, gaming, TV as education, time shift TV, internet, search — essentially fulfilling all the elementary functions of a home PC. Earlier the thinking was that IPTV was a subset of broadband, but we realise now that IPTV can drive broadband.

What you are doing is stripping the TV from IPTV and selling only broadband...
No. I am selling only the interactive TV part. If this were to happen (cable operators buy into the idea of offering interactive services along with their basic offering) then declaration would improve and so would prices.

In an over-served market like India would there be an appetite for interactive services?
I agree there is the problem of plenty in India. Time shift TV is the killer app(lication) in IPTV precisely because it addresses the problem of plenty. That means you can watch any show that you have missed in the last seven days at a time convenient to you. However till we are able to get an application that makes IPTV an information device, it will remain a premium service. An IPTV subscription costs Rs 249 to Rs 999 against the average of Rs 150 a month for cable and DTH. Over the next three to five years we expect 5-10 million homes to be IPTV-enabled.