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Forget catching up - IPTV providers in east and South Eastern Europe can pioneer digital and on-demand
IPTV providers may be playing catch-up in many world Pay TV markets but in eastern and south eastern Europe there is a clear opportunity for incumbent or alternative operators to leapfrog their cable TV rivals in particular, where analogue services are still commonplace. Delegates at the IPTV World Forum Eastern Europe last month heard from several television start-ups, none of whom were predicting more than a 10 per cent Pay TV market share within two years, but all of whom were helping to pioneer digital TV in their local markets and, in some cases, giving consumers their first taste of true content-on-demand. Among them was iNES Group in Romania, which launched its IPTV service in April using fibre with MPEG-2 compression, locally developed middleware and Amino set-top boxes. It offers 103 channels of standard-definition TV and hopes to introduce Video on Demand and HDTV in the fourth quarter. The company is also offering Replay TV on 18 channels today (with 72 hours worth of content stored for on-demand viewing) and according to Iosif Szavuj, iNES’s executive director: “Originally, we offered six channels of time-shift TV and were amazed by the feedback from customers. I think this is one of the killer applications.” iNES is aiming for the premium, early-adopter market in Romania with its triple-play service and Szavuj is hoping for 10,000 customers by the end of 2007. Meanwhile, Laura Vaitkuviene, projects manager at TEO LT in Lithuania, believes her company’s IPTV service, which launches in September, will differentiate itself from cable with better quality audio and video, a choice of languages and a better programme guide. |
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