Thread: MTNL was the First Service Provider to Deploy IP TV in India

MTNL, which was the first service provider of 3G mobile broadband services in India, is again the first service provider to deploy IT TV network in India. The government owned company is taking great initiatives to be the first in providing all the new mobile and broadband services in India. These initiatives are based on the painful lessons learnt in the past. They were lying low when the private owned mobile service providers came into the Indian market. MTNL thought they had it all and as the government owned telephone network, they are resilient to competition but they were proved wrong in no time and they suffered severe loss as the quality of the service provided by private service providers surpassed the service level of this government owned telephone company.

Once bitten twice shy, now MTNL does not want to be left behind in the rat race. It wants to rule the roost now by launching all the new prospective services first in the country. Along these lines, MTNL launched the first 3G service now followed by IP TV in India.

MTNL is collaborating with IOL broadband to provide this service. In this collaboration IOL broadband has to provide the required network while MTNL took care of all the infrastructure needs.

For IP TV to be successful in India, we need more reliable broadband connectivity. In most parts of the country, the quality of broadband connection is poor. The speed of the internet connection is highly crucial for the quality of the IP TV signals. In India the quality of broadband internet connection is poor and the speed fluctuates heavily. This will make the quality of IP TV unreliable.

IP TV uses digital broadcast through broadband cables, which is controlled, by a set top box as that of the DSS boxes. The set top box is the main component that converts the signals to be viewed in our TV. Though in other parts of the world IP TV service has advanced a great deal, India is left far behind and the reason for this lack of growth in this area is poor internet connectivity and poor broadband infrastructure. IP TV uses the same technology through which data is transferred through the internet. It uses preloaded software in the set top box to convert the signals as regular TV signals. Once we get full fledged IP TV service we will be able to get all in one broadband packages that will cut down our costs on TV, Internet and telephone bills. We can expect to have more channels for lesser price through broadband IP TV.

As we are still waiting for 3G, we do not know how long we have to wait for IP TV to become popular in India. Probably the market was misled by the popularity figures of mobile phone network growth in India. No other service grew as fast as mobile phone networks in India probably these figures misguided companies that tried to invest in 3G and IP TV.

both MTNL and BSNL, in collaboration with MyWay has launched the IPTV service in several parts of the country.
MyWay IPTV Services India and Digital IPTV