Fashion Show of ZTE 3G Terminals

IPTV-based services will eventually become an
indispensable part of our everyday life, and any telco that takes
an early start towards this vision will ride this trend and enjoy
competitive advantages.
IPTV Brings Multiple Revenue Streams
With versatile support for enriched contents, interactive user
experiences, subscriber personalization, and comprehensive
value-added services, IPTV brings multiple revenue streams to
telcos.
Media Group, its IPTV service significantly increases the
viewing time between 10am and 6pm, as shown in Figure
4. One of the possible reasons is believed to be the TV-on-
Demand feature that allows housewives watch their preferred
primetime TV programs during other times, e.g. day time.
The increased viewing time transforms those traditionally
less-attractive timeslots into premium spots for advertisement
insertion.
Subscription
According to market date, the end users may be willing to
pay a higher subscription fee for an IPTV service package that
is more attractive and easier to use than the equivalent cable
TV or satellite TV service packages.
IPTV services may be offered in several tiers (packages) to
cater different catergories of subscribers. Each IPTV service
package is a mix of broadcast TV channels, premium contents,
and certain types and amounts of value-added services.
Premium contents
With Time-Shifting TV feature and TV-on-Demand feature,
IPTV may change the viewing habits of traditional TV
viewers.
According to a recent analysis by Shanghai Media Group
– the IPTV operator in Shanghai, China – IPTV customers
are more interested in programs such as movies, kids shows,
reality shows (law), and sports (as shown in Figure 3)
that they would have missed if without TSTV and TVOD
features.
Figure 4 IPTV adds viewing time
Everyone dislikes irrelevant advertisements but seeks/
accepts relevant information. While the traditional broadcastbased
advertisement model is impaired by the ad-skipping
function in PVR and NPVR, the personalized intelligent
advertisement model enabled by IPTV actually improves the
relevance and acceptance rate of each advertisement.
Value-added services
IPTV is an intuitive graphical interface for many valueadded
services. For example, televoting is a popular service
for mass-competition TV programs such as “Dancing
with Stars”. With IPTV, a viewer can vote with the remote
control via an intuitive and reliable graphical interface, and
can also check the statistics immediately afterwards. After
the Dance Sport Final Competition in China in 2006, the 20
million cable TV viewers cast only 40,000 votes via phone
calls and short messages, but the 100,000 IPTV viewers
cast about 5000 votes: a 25 times improvement in the
voting rate!
Figure 3 IPTV enables premium content
Intelligent advertisements
According to another related analysis by Shanghai
Looking Forward
IPTV seems the most promising killer application to bring
telcos more and more revenue streams and edge out competitors
if, and only if, it is properly evolved.
ZTE TECHNOLOGIES January 2008 25