Indian telco BSNL Chennai Telephones is to launch IPTV services in the city of Chennai "shortly", according to reports in local newspaper The Hindu, with an initial offering of 140 linear channels.

Chennai Telephones reportedly added that the number of channels could be increased in the future if demand was there, in which case it would need to enlarge the scope of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that it has entered into with various private vendors.

Once launched in Chennai, the service will gradually be rolled out in other areas, Chennai Telephones added.  "The imaging quality during the dry run was pretty impressive," one BSNL official is reported as saying.