June 30, 2009

UTStarcom Ranked Top IPTV Vendor in Asia

UTStarcom was named the leading Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) provider in Asia in Multimedia Research Group's latest Global IPTV Market Leaders Report. The analysis tracks the top 100 IPTV vendors in 24 regional sub-segments. UTStarcom's strategic IPTV deployments and strong subscriber gains drove the company's rise to the top in the Access, Video-on-Demand (VOD), Set-top-Boxes, Middleware and Content Protection categories.

UTStarcom introduced its RollingStream end-to-end IPTV system in China in 2005. As of March 2009, UTStarcom's RollingStream supported more than 1.32 million live IPTV subscribers globally. In 2008, UTStarcom partnered with Guangxi Telecom Company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of China Telecom, to deploy the first IPTV-based digital signage solution in 14 Guangxi cities.

UTStarcom was also among the first to deliver the Olympic Games via IPTV to China viewers during summer 2008.

(For more on IPTV in Asia, click here).

A new report from Pyramid Research, "IPTV in Asia/Pacific: Profit Picture Fuzzy, but Momentum Building" finds that despite the massive investments necessary in Asia/Pacific's IPTV market, both in technology and content procurement, telecom operators must invest to gain subscriber market share

Although Asia/Pacific has the distinction of having the most successful IPTV operators globally, and rollouts continue throughout the region, operators continue to face challenges in three key areas: regulatory constraints, content, and technology costs, said Charles Moon, analyst at Pyramid Research and author of the report, in a prepared statement.

"One of the most glaring problems surrounding IPTV has been the lack of any framework around the service, putting it in a gray area, with neither the telecom nor broadcasting regulators having clear oversight of the sector," said Moon.