Mr Leong Keng Thai: TV viewing is increasingly morphing from being a traditional one way distribution of video into a multiple-way interactive entertainment-communication experience.

The new breed of IPTV (Internet Protocol TV) applications and services which will ride on the Next Generation Broadband infrastructure will offer higher levels of interactivity and capabilities, paving the way for the development of new business models in the
IPTV market.

Mr Leong Keng Thai, Deputy Chief Executive and Director-General (Telecoms) of the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), said this in his opening remarks at the recent Forum on IPTV Standards which was jointly organised by IDA and the Media
Development Authority.

The event, supported by the Asia-Pacific Telecommunity and the Ministry for Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan, attracted representatives from standards bodies, IPTV operators, content providers, application platform and middleware providers and equipment manufacturers from across the IPTV value chain, as well as broadcasting and telecommunication regulators from across the Asia-Pacific region.

Mr Leong noted that IPTV adoption was picking up globally. According to a 2009 Frost and Sullivan study, the number of IPTV subscribers worldwide currently stands at 24 million, with 27 per cent of these in the Asia Pacific. This figure is set to grow to 81 million by 2013, with Asia holding 34 per cent of the market.

IPTV services, he said, are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Users can trade in securities, order food, or call up real-time information about football while watching a match. They can also see real-time viewership statistics of different channels and can put their own content on a portal for other subscribers to view and rate, all through their TV sets.

“TV viewing is increasingly morphing from being a traditional one way distribution of video into a multiple-way interactive entertainment-communication experience,” he observed. “Consumers are increasingly demanding greater control over and personalisation of the content they watch, expecting to be able to interact with their video experiences by, for example, influencing outcomes by instantly voting with their remote control, or purchasing that trendy piece of garment donned by the lead actor in the movie on the spot.”

Mr Khoong Hock Yun: Ideally, a common featured set-top box should support different operators, since one operator is unlikely to be able to deliver all the possible services.

New business models enabled by such interactivity will enable industry players to provide innovative products and services to consumers, and to reach out to the non-pay TV subscribers, said Mr Leong. Examples of these new business models include targeted and contextualised advertisements, infomediary services and e-procurement.

A major foundation piece that is needed to make all these happen is the development and adoption of IPTV standards. In a video address, Mr Malcolm Johnson, Director of the International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU) Telecommunication Standardisation Bureau, said IPTV needs to be based on a solid foundation of global standards which will enable the smooth provision of services by various members of the IPTV ecosystem such as the service providers, Internet service providers and broadcasters. Standards make things simpler, ensure quality of service and reduce costs through economies of scale, he said. They allow value-added service to be deployed over IP-based managed networks and enable manufacturers to start developing products to support such services. ITU was also represented at the Forum by Dr Masahito Kawamori, Coordinator of ITU-Telecommunication’s IPTV Global Standards Initiative.

A critical area of IPTV standards development is in the set-top box. Presenting an overview of IPTV and Singapore’s standardisation efforts at the Forum, Mr Khoong Hock Yun, Assistant Chief Executive, Infrastructure and Services Development, IDA, said Singapore plans an open approach to the Common-Featured Set-Top Box. Ideally, a common featured set-top box should support different operators, since one operator is unlikely to be able to deliver all the possible services, he said.

In view of this, IDA and MDA have formed a panel as part of an initiative called Project Next Generation Interactive Multimedia Applications and Services (NIMS), to recommend the appropriate IPTV standards that best meet the functional requirements for Common-Featured Set-Top Boxes.

Sitting on the NIMS Panel are 11 industry players - ESPN Star Sports, MediaCorp, MobileOne, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, Nucleus Connect, PCCW, SingNet, StarHub, SyQic Capital, Xinya Media and Zii. The standards selected by the panel would subsequently form the basis of the reference IPTV standards guidelines for the NIMS CF STB.