U.S. IPTV subscriptions reach 600,000
Jan 16, 2007 8:00 AM
IPTVU: What do you see for AT&T?
BL: AT&T's rollout is quite tentative, and it is not trying to acquire large numbers of subscribers today.
When AT&T was talking about introducing in 10 or 12 markets, I was thinking in terms of the San Francisco Bay Area being a market, Houston being a market. Now, what AT&T is saying is that in the San Francisco Bay Area, there are three markets, like the Cupertino, Saratoga and Fremont markets. They're not producing what I expected. I expected 10 markets to be San Francisco Bay Area, San Antonio, Los Angeles and San Diego — major metropolitan areas. In terms of what I have seen with other rollouts, that would not be unexpected.
The other thing with AT&T is at the end of the third quarter in September they said they had 3000 IPTV subscribers, which is a drop in the bucket. I don't expect them to do what PCCW in Hong Kong did, but PCCW signed up 200,000 subscribers in the first 10 weeks, and was installing them at about the rate they were coming in. So they were generating business at a much higher rate than AT&T. Hong Kong's only got 2 million families, and AT&T's territory is much larger, so the potential market is greater.
IPTVU: How will developments in Web video impact the acceptance of IPTV service, particularly because consumer electronics manufacturers are trying to make it easier for viewers to access Web video content directly from their televisions, and because younger viewers are moving to the Web?
BL: Web video does not provide a replacement for the multichannel IPTV or cable experience, so it is not a direct substitution today. It will compete with video on demand services from IPTV and cable companies as well as video rentals. I think that the IPTV service providers can take advantage of these techniques themselves and use them to enhance their businesses. This can well be net positive for the IPTV service providers.
The IPTV providers can also leverage the free, user-contributed content from sites such as YouTube. This content generally does not fit the TV very well, so it will probably not be significant for IPTV service providers.
IPTVU: How many IPTV subscribers are there in the United States today? What numbers do you project for the United States in 2010?
BL: We believe that there are about 600,000 IPTV subscribers in the U.S. today and that this number will grow to 1.4 million in 2010.
IPTVU: Is there anything else you would like to add?
BL: The real IPTV opportunities are in Europe and Asia. The North American market is already saturated by cable and satellite, so the IPTV providers will have to win over cable and satellite subscribers. Europe is very strong today and the majority of people in most countries are not using cable or satellite services, so the European market is much more open. The same is true in Asia, and China and India will become the two largest IPTV markets in the long run.
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