Konkuk University Medical Center and its ... - Korea IT Times

Electronics Special
Tracing 50 Years
of Korea's Electronics Industry
Development
The inevitable change, introduction of IPTV
"The introduction of IPTV is essential not optional!" Suh
Jongryeol, Executive Vice President of the Media Business Unit at
KT stressed. What makes the move to IPTV so special that is
should be taken as an 'inevitable"and how will IPTV change the
TV landscape? Korea IT Times leaned about 'The emergence of
IPTV in Korea and development direction' in a recent conversation
with Mr. Suh. "As the age of Media 2.0 and convergence enters,
Korea was prepared for the induction of IPTV. A successful
business model in web 2.0 flowed into TV from the open biz environment,
and it leads that paradigm change into the Media 2.0
age", Mr. Suh explained. With the development of technology, the
fusion of broad media and communication brought the expansion
of internet bandwidth, which facilitated the transmission of video
and interactive content. Accordingly, operators began crafting a
new business model that would embrace the content shift.
IPTV Service Progress
IPTV has been a long time in coming. Let's look back to the
time when the installation and introduction plan of IPTV was
first discussed by the Presidential Commission on Broadcasting
and Communication Convergence in July 2006. At the same
time Hanaro Telecom started to provide a service known as
'Hana TV', which was a 'pre-IPTV' service using Video on
Demand (VoD) technology. In July 2007, KT launched 'Mega
TV' and in September of the same year LG responded with
'myLGTV'. In December 2007, the long awaited dream of the
'Internet multimedia broadcast law' was finally passed. In
September 2008, three telecom companies, Hanaro Telecom
(now, SK Broadband), LG Telecom (now, LG U+) and KT enjoyed
the honor of being selected as IPTV service providers. With
in two months, KT began service commercialization for the first
time. SK and LG followed with their offering in January 2009.
IPTV subscribers surpassed the one million mark in October
2009. In April 2010, IPTV reached 2 million subscribers and the
industry has high expectations for these numbers to continue to
Suh Jongryeol, Executive Vice President Media Business Unit at KT
grow in the future.
Looking at the global trends of IPTV, PCCW now TV from
Hong Kong was introduced IPTV in 2003. After 3 years, the
American firm Verizon FiOS TV and FT Orange TV from
France made IPTV available to it's customers and other companies
around the world followed suit. The base of IPTV has broadened
continuously ever since. Today, subscribers world wide total
approximately 64.29 million, which demonstrates a a rapid increase
when compared to 11.09 million subscribers in 2007. This
index shows that IPTV continues to have the potential to develop
82 KOREA IT TIMES | October 2010