Wednesday, June 14, 2006

China NetCom IPTV from UTStarcom

China Netcom Communications, the second fixed line operator in China has committed to Alameda, Calif-based UTStarcom to supply the largest capacity deployment of IPTV in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province.

The contract concludes the successful commercial trial of its RollingStream end-to-end IPTV service that began in May of 2005, with a capacity of 100,000 concurrent media streams.

Since the launch, the service's subscriber base has grown to about 53,000.

The Harbin IPTV service includes 60 channels of live broadcast television with "time-shifting" capabilities, 48-hour TV-on-demand and 5,000 hours of video-on-demand. Other features include an on-line weather reports, searching services and Internet information browsing.

Harbin is a city with a population of almost 10 million, over a third of which are located within the urban city.

UTStarcom's three other Chininese commercial contracts, in Shanghai, Fuzhou and Quanzhou, have a combined capacity of over 50,000 media steams.

The UTStarcom contract is but another example of the rapid growth and investment of broadband service in China, including VoIP and ITPV. This growth will doubtless be mirrored by an increase in China's significant level of IPTV piracy.

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