This year's IPTV Forum Middle East & Africa will be taking place in Dubai once more, featuring 26 service provider presentations as well as a special focus on the Indian IPTV market, with the conference sessions free to attend for operators from Africa and Southeast Asia.
While cable and IPTV remain youthful platforms in the MEA region at present, many telcos are investing substantial amounts in their broadband networks, in line with government drives to keep ahead of the ICT curve, and regulatory barriers are starting to fall and content production values to increase. According to a recent report from the Arab Advisors Group, there were six countries in the MENA region offering IPTV services as of May 2009 (Algeria, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Qatar and the UAE), compared to four service providers in three countries in August 2007.
As these and other developments pick up speed and weight, the IPTV Forum Middle East & Africa event (www.iptv-mea.com) will once again tackle the big issues facing the region's IPTV industry, as well as giving regional players the chance to learn from each other and from other IPTV operators from further afield. This year's event will take place once more in Dubai's Jumeirah Beach Hotel, on November 15th-16th, with the exhibition free to attend for all visitors.
Conference speakers confirmed for the event include: Khalifa Al Shamsi, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Etisalat, Saad Dhafer Al Qahtani, VP Residential Sector at Saudi Telecom; Tamouh Khauli, VP at Orange Jordan; Mario Jorge Pino, Director of Business Development at Etisalat; Roverto Kaufmann, Director of IPTV at du; Samir Ibrahim, Head of Distribution Sales at Al Jazeera; Marc-Antoine D'Halluin, President and CEO of Orbit/Showtime Arabia; Syed Naveed Akhtar, GM of Pakistan Telecommunication Company; Arvind Kumar Srivastava, GM of MTNL; and Dilip Kumar Routray, Head of IPTV Networks at Bharti Airtel.
The event will give attendees a chance to meet the entire value chain for the region's IPTV market under one roof, including operators, ISPs, content providers, property developers and hoteliers, manufacturers, vendors, regulators and consultants. Having been sold out in 2008, when it hosted over 750 visitors (up 27% from 2007), this year's event features a new and extended exhibition floor plan.
There will also be a special focus on IPTV in India on Day 2 (November 16th) of the event, developed in association with the IPTV Forum India, bringing IPTV operators and key influencers from the Indian market to the Dubai event, thus allowing visitors to meet even more experts and learn about further market environments in one event.
The event will also feature two post-conference workshops on November 17th, offering day-long classes led by industry experts Ben Schwarz and Mihai Crasneanu addressing the challenge of enriching the user experience, from both a technical approach ('Justifying Quality of Experience investment in the credit crunch') and from a content-based approach ('IPTV content strategies', November 17th).
To find out more and register for the event, please click here
