BUSAN (WiMAX Day). As IPTV is set to flourish in WiMAX networks around the world, it has yet to be approved for use with WiBro by regulators in Korea. Following the second International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Focus Group IPTV meeting last week, the controversy remains over whether IPTV should fall under telecommunications or broadcast regulations in Korea.

There is added pressure from broadcasters in Korea as local cable TV and satellite companies contend that IPTV will erode their businesses. One concern is that foreign content, primarily American, will flood the market and seriously compete against local Korean broadcasters.

KT Corp had hoped to launch IPTV with WiBro earlier this year, but is restricted due to regulations. Many analysts believe that IPTV will be a hit for WiBro because KT is targeting young mobile consumers.

In a recent report by Daishin Securities in Seoul, it was stated that IPTV would dramatically increase the value of WiBro services, and thereby increase customer loyalty and mid- to long-term revenue growth.

What is IPTV?
IPTV stands for Internet Protocol Television. It’s an IP-based platform that enables the delivery of video over an IP network, and is referred to as the third leg of “triple-play” in telecoms. For fixed cable and DSL broadband networks, it is estimated by TDResearch that global IPTV revenues will reach US$17 billion by 2010.

In the case of WiMAX, it should enable a WiMAX service provider to offer video programming similar to that offered by cable or satellite TV providers, and specifically video on demand (VoD) streaming video to individual consumers.

To what extent WiMAX will support the bandwidth required by IPTV remains to be seen. To deliver the same broadcast quality found in cable or satellite TV, the present codex for IPTV may not do the job for WiMAX where, according to Eric Hamilton, CTO of Unwired Australia, “throughput per video stream is expected to be [more than] 2Mpbs.”

The WiMAX connection
Despite the possible technical limitations, development of IPTV services for WiMAX is growing steadily. Nortel and Redline Communications demonstrated their IPTV products earlier this month at the WiMAX World conference in Boston, and Nortel is developing IPTV products with LG for fixed broadband and WiMAX.

News Corp subsidiary NDS Group plc, a leader in secure content solutions for digital pay-TV, plans to launch technology that will connect television to fixed WiMAX via set-top boxes and also to mobile WiMAX handsets.

Sky Television is another News Corp unit that has been searching for a WiMAX connection. Sky in New Zealand is working with Woosh Wireless where, in July, Woosh secured rights to 2.3 GHz spectrum owned by Sky. The two companies have combined the spectrum rights they own to provide TV, voice and broadband. According to Sky Television chief executive John Fellet, “there is an exciting future in delivering content services over WiMAX.”

Sky also has been reported to be searching for partners in the UK, as has DirecTV in the USA. In particular, numerous reports link DirecTV and Sky with Alvarion as a potential equipment supplier.

American telco operators seem to be the most bullish for IPTV and WiMAX. When AT&T conducted WiMAX trials last year, IPTV was a major component of the testing, and as Sprint Nextel readies its WiMAX services for launch over the next 24 months, Hollywood studios are lining up to get in on the action.

For the immediate future, perhaps the winning combination of IPTV and WiMAX will be video of lesser quality. Eric Hamilton noted that in such a scenario, WiMAX service providers “can ‘tune’ the experience the customer gets on the basis of the device that is being used to view the content.”

In the case of mobile WiMAX, where the difference in quality is not as apparent on small screens, the video portal YouTube, which was recently acquired by Google, might be an example of a perfect environment.

Downloading YouTube onto mobile WiMAX, David Spense, CEO of Unwired Australia, commented: “my mind boggles at the thought of populating GoogleEarth with video clips (even live video) and adding that to handheld WiMAX mobile devices with locality-based services — funded by local advertising revenues. You could Zoom down to any place in the world, click on to a live video, and Google could send you an ad based on your current location and what you are looking at.”