IPTV yet to take off

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Kolkata, Sep 20: Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), which was launched amid much fanfare on August 15, is yet to take off. The reason for the delay as stated by BSNL officials is that two of the major players, Sony and Zee, have not confirmed their channel packages.

"We have just received word from Sony confirming their IPTV packages, but not from Zee. We are hopeful that all packages will be procured in a month's time," said the chief general manager of Calcutta Telephones, SK Chakravarty.

Another major company that has not confirmed its participation is ESPN STAR Sports.

Chakravarty said, "We have deliberately not advertised for IPTV on a large scale as we do not want to publicise it before we procure all the channels."

Meanwhile, he said those who have registered for IPTV will be provided the service, with 80 channels, from October 1.

The service will be provided free of cost till all the packages are made available. Around 3500 people have registered for IPTV since its commercial launch. Out of this, around 1300 are from Salt Lake , the area in which the service was first launched.

BSNL is also vying with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to include IPTV along with Direct to Home (DTH) and cable TV in its Policy Guidelines for Down-linking of TV Channels.

Chakravarty was speaking on the occasion of the launch of BSNL puja special offers for landline and mobile customers in the state.

The BSNL chief in the state also revealed that the telecom major is going to increase its capacity over the next two months for 2.25 lakh new broadband connections. "We have exhausted our existing capacity for 1.10 lakh connections, and new applicants have been put on the waiting list. We want to add 1.5 lakh broadband connections under BSNL by March 2008," said Chakravarty.

The new connections will be part of the multi-play equipment that BSNL has procured for providing a combined package of landline, broadband and IPTV connections; as against the previous batch of voice and data equipment.