Don't Believe Everything You See on (IP)TV: The Challenges of IPTV Today

IPTV is the undoubtedly the future of broadcasting. Expert estimates of IPTV penetration range from 20 million households to 72 million households worldwide by 2010. China alone is expected to have between 3.6 million and 16 million households on IPTV by 2009. — However, while there is no question that IPTV represents the future, exactly what that future will look like is still uncertain. The vastly different estimates by different analysts is one indication of this lack of clarity. — This uncertainty is due to the fact that the technology is still in a relatively early stage. Worldwide IPTV penetration is currently about 1.5 million households. The interaction of video, voice and data on the scale that companies hope for has not been tested at all, making test cases of all IPTV projects now. Scaling up will bring its own set of problems. How existing networks and systems will handle 72 million households is completely unknown.

Published

2006-01

Content type

Original Research

DOI

10.5594/M00375

ISBN

978-1-61482-938-6