Friday, 09 January 2009
updated 1 minute ago
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YOUR DIRECTORY /

Connected voices

by ArabianBusiness.com staff writer on Tuesday, 28 October 2008

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Next month’s IPTV World Forum MENA event will be staged at Dubai’s Jumeirah Beach Hotel.

November sees the return of the Middle East & Africa instalment of the IPTV World Forum to Dubai. Digital Broadcast profiles some of the expected highlights of this year's event.

Since last year's inaugural Middle East and Africa IPTV World Forum, IPTV has continued to make headway in the region with du expanding its infrastructure in a deal with Tandberg Television and more recently, the announcement of a new deployment in Amman by Orange Jordan.

A report by the Arab Advisors Group in September of last year claimed that despite the technology's footprint being "minuscule", the continued adoption of broadband and planned rollouts in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait and Egypt, would ensure this situation changes rapidly.

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"The Middle East and Africa are the fastest growing broadband markets in the world," says Gavin Whitechurch, research director with event organiser Informa Telecoms & Media, adding that a recent report by Infonetics found that 48 percent of the world's IPTV revenue was derived from the EMEA region.

"The Middle East and Africa promise significant growth opportunities across the telecoms sector in the next five years, and as competition intensifies, operators are expected to roll-out attractive services such as IPTV to both retain customers and attract new ones," claims Whitechurch.

Despite the regional nature of the show's title, Whitechurch points out that there is nothing parochial about the event.

"We will showcase a number of international success stories at the event. We have also added a presentation from Ted Hsuing, head of business development at one of the IPTV industry's pioneering operators, PCCW of Hong Kong. He will be sharing the company's unique perspective on the opportunities and challenges of IPTV and quad-play," he explains.

"PCCW and other leading international operators such as Orange Telecom, Deutsche Telekom and BT will also be relaying stories from the frontline of some of the most advanced IPTV service deployments."

Acknowledging the progress the Middle East has made on this front in recent years, prominent members of the local industry will gather to discuss deployments past, present and future in the presence of the technology vendors vying to provide the necessary infrastructure.

Whitechurch points out however that the event is developing into not just a place to do business, but a valuable forum at which to discuss issues and trends.

"There is such a huge interest in the event that we've been adding additional speakers from the major operators. In particular, we have a presentation for the region's major operators. Etisalat has recently come on board to discuss the challenges of transitioning from a telecoms network to a true content delivery network," reveals Whitechurch.

With IPTV perhaps the most visible product of broadcaster/telco convergence so far, it is no surprise that operators from both industries will be strongly represented at the show.

"As well as Etisalat we will have Osman Sultan CEO of du, Paul Doany, CEO of Oger Telecom, Hans Paulson, CCO of Uganda Telecom, and representatives of Showtime Arabia, Telkom South Africa, Qatar Telecom and Al Jazeera at the show," boasts Whitechurch.

The two day conference stream at the forum will continue to build on the strong foundations laid last year with topics ranging from marketing for telcos and deployment case studies from France Telecom, Tiscali, Uganda Telecom and Portugal Telecom.

The exhibition, which runs parallel to the conference programme will feature many of the key IPTV technology vendors including Motorola, Tilgin, Thomson and Harris.

Technology titans

IPTV market leaders

The Multimedia Research Group announced the results of its latest Global IPTV Market Leaders report at the end of August with several developments of note and IT industry majors making strong gains.

Microsoft Corp climbed to third position globally in the middleware, VOD and content protection markets.

Verimatrix made the list of top five vendors in all four global regions and came in in the number one position worldwide for content protection, showing a significant consistency in all major markets.

Its achievement was all the more remarkable given it marked the first time one organisation had claimed pole position in consecutive years.

In VOD, Thomson pulled to number one globally for the first time, leaving SeaChange in second place, while Motorola remained in the global lead for set top boxes although Sagem, Cisco and Amino are showing signs of closing the gap.

"Some IPTV market segments are more volatile than others and will certainly see some changes in the future," says Jose Alvear, MRG analyst.

"However, one thing is certain, the IPTV market is still going strong.

"Not only are subscriber numbers rising, but new operators are in the midst of deploying IPTV systems in various markets worldwide."

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