China Telecom Launches Major IPTV Deployment In Shanghai

China Telecom will deploy UTStarcom's mVision Internet television (IPTV) system as part of a new service to be launched to 5,000 subscribers in Shanghai by the end of this year.

China Telecom, in partnership with the Shanghai Media Group, has enthusiastically embraced the technology, and the new Shanghai service is just the final stage of a five-province commercial trial of an IPTV service that will allow subscribers to view television content delivered over IP networks with considerable time-shift controls over programming. IPTV is growing dramatically in Asia-Pacific, which, according ABI Research, will account for more than half the 110 million subscribers worldwide by 2010, and UTStarcom says that it sees the China market as a long-term opportunity.

"While we don't expect revenue associated with this agreement to be meaningful in the near term, we do believe this represents a significant opportunity over the next several years," UTStarcom China chief executive officer and president Ying Wu said in a statement. "We believe that IPTV technology will revolutionize the way people watch TV by empowering users with the ability to choose the programs they want to watch when they want to watch them.."

The mVision system is an end-to-end solution that allows telecommunications providers to deliver television and video content over IP networks. Designed for great scalability and reliability, it supports a wide range of IPTV services, including broadcast TV, Network PVR (n-PVR), Video on Demand (VoD), and Near Video on Demand (NVoD) over existing IP networks.