Middle East event augurs well for local IPTV market

The recent IPTV World Forum Middle East & Africa demonstrated the surprisingly high level of interest and active investment in IPTV in these high growth markets, with the event attendance up 25% on the previous year (click here to view a video review of the event).

Held at the magnificent Jumeirah Beach Hotel in Dubai on 3 & 4th November 2008, the conference and exhibition showcased the state-of-the-art for IPTV, both in the region and worldwide.

The event brought together an impressive list of service providers and ISPs from across the region and beyond who are evaluating or deploying IPTV, including Etisalat, (United Arab Emirates) du (Dubai), Saudi Telecom Company (Saudi Arabia) Zain (Saudi Arabia), Mobily (Saudi Arabia), Batelco (Bahrain), KPN (Netherlands), Oman Telecom (Oman), Orascom Holdings (Egypt) Maroc Telecom, Neutel (Bahrain), Kingdom Telecom (Bahrain),TE Data (Algeria), Turk Telekom, Oger Telecom (Turkey), PTC (Pakistan), Sorush Multimedia Corp (Iran), ATV (Jordan), Kuwait Establishment Company, Takarum (Jordan), Rogers Cable (Canada), CableVision (Jordan), YahSat (United Arab Emirates), Telecom Egypt, Orbit Communications, and Qtel (Kuwait).

In addition, the event also attracted a good range of content providers and networks, including City 7 TV, Showtime Arabia, Al Jazeera, CNBC Arabia, BBC World Service, Eurostar Communications, Walt Disney, MTV Arabia, Arabsat, the Arab Digital Alliance, IRIB (Japan), Dubai TV, SRPC, MBC, Shemaroo, Ten Sport and Al Aan TV

The conference had many high level speakers, but it was Paul Donay, CEO of both Turk Telecom and its holding company Oger Telecom, who attracted the biggest frenzy of media attention. Mr Donay discussed his companies’ investments in IPTV and why they believe IPTV has such a strong future.

Other conference highlighting included insight from Subhra Das, Senior Vice President, Marketing at du – one of the earliest deployments of IPTV - whilst Roberto Kaufmann, du’s Head of IPTV Roll Out, commented on deployment challenges for IPTV in the local environment. From Etisalat, Mario Jorge Pino, Digital Media Strategy, discussed the requirement for operators transitioning to content delivery networks.

IPTV News was active at the event, capturing interviews to give you an insight from the region and a flavour of the event. To view a video review of the event, click here or visit HYPERLINK "http://www.iptv-mea.com" www.iptv-mea.com. Watch out for further video interviews from the event to be added to IPTV News in future weeks.