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Indiantelevision.com's Digital Edge

Bharti Airtel contracts UTStarcom to launch IPTV

Indiantelevision.com Team

(18 September 2007 1:30 pm)

MUMBAI:Telco major Bharti Airtel is teaming up with US-based UTStarcom for its year-end IPTV services rollout plan.

Bharti Airtel has contracted UTStarcom to supply its RollingStream end-to-end IPTV solution that will enable it to offer live broadcast television, time-shifted TV and video-on-demand (VoD) bundled with the operator's existing broadband and voice services, which can all be consolidated into a single bill sent to customers at the end of each month.

Airtel expects to offer this new service bundle to customers in Gurgaon and the National Capital Region (NCR) by the end of the year. The service will also be rolled out in a phased manner across eight additional regions in the country.

"We are happy to team with UTStarcom to offer IPTV and other new services to our customers in India," said Airtel Broadband and Telephone Service president Atul Bindal.

"UTStarcom's RollingStream solution has proven technology to support our requirements in rolling out IPTV service in India. We are running our IPTV trials in Gurgaon and have received a favorable response from our customers participating in these trials," added Bindal.

Earlier this year, UTStarcom announced a three-year contract through its collaboration with Aksh Optifibre Ltd. to deploy its RollingStream solution with Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd. (MTNL) in India. In addition to its deployments in India, UTStarcom also has commercial IPTV deployments with China Telecom and China Netcom in China and Softbank in Japan. Demand for IPTV is expected to grow significantly in the Asia Pacific region.

According to Frost and Sullivan, IPTV subscribers in this region are expected to surpass 27 million by 2013 with China and India being the high-growth markets.

"Today's announcement represents our second commercial deployment of RollingStream in India this year," said UTStarcom South Asia MD Vijay Yadav. "We believe our RollingStream solution can revolutionize the way television is viewed in India by making services more interactive and personalized to the end user."