Deutsche Telekom preparing for IPTV this year but will face competition from ISPs

AOL, HanseNet and Freenet likely candidates for early alternatives

The German IPTV market is starting to warm up with Deutsche Telekom committed to introducing broadcast TV and VOD over its new VDSL network later this year, and Telefonica Deutschland - the wholesale IP backbone infrastructure provider - now testing IPTV so it can support the service for its ISP customers.

Deutsche Telekom is currently introducing VDSL (Very high-speed DSL) to 10 cities including Berlin, Munich, Düsseldorf, Cologne, Stuttgart, Leipzig and Hamburg. Once operational - and the switch-on is expected midyear - the company says it will be able to offer connection speeds of up to 50Mbps to the home - enough for multiroom HDTV if desired. This is a dramatic escalation in the speed race and a significant improvement on the company’s current consumer options of 1Mb, 2Mb and 6Mb broadband.

The German incumbent is not revealing details of the IPTV service yet, other than to say it will deliver broadcast TV through the DSL network (as opposed to using digital terrestrial TV). A spokesman pointed out that Deutsche

Telekom’s ISP, T-Online, already provides a broadband VOD service (T-Online Vision) through the public Internet, but the new service would introduce ‘regular’ TV and content-on-demand through a private network.

Meanwhile, the ISPs AOL, HanseNet and Freenet are possible candidates to launch a rival IPTV service – each of them being a customer of Telefonica Deutschland for wholesale IP backbone services, and therefore potential beneficiaries of the IPTV platform the Telefonica subsidiary is putting in place. We understand Telefonica Deutschland already has a launch partner - probably an existing ISP - to use its core network and telephone exchange services for IPTV.

Telefonica Deutschland is stressing that it has no ambitions to enter the residential triple-play market itself, as reported in one German newspaper. “It is not our aim to go into the consumer market,” says a spokesperson. “But we are one of the largest alternative wholesale providers to Deutsche Telekom in Germany and providing a platform that can enable IPTV is essential. It will be a full multimedia platform offering. Our customers will want to offer services and we need to make sure they can - and we want them to be able to be first to market.”

Telefonica Deutschland was expecting to start trials of its IPTV delivery platform mid-February. To facilitate the trial, the company signed content agreements with the broadcasters ARD, ZDF, ProSiebenSat.1 and RTL.

The company is a business-to-business IP infrastructure and services provider, taking care of all technical and service issues in the core network and telephone exchanges on behalf of its customers. ISPs can use Telefonica