Airtel Triple Play

[wR2g4vdTjL5d]

From somewhere on the net : Bharti AirTel plans to launch triple play services — phone, internet and cable TV — in 90 cities to its fixed-line customers. Bharti Airtel Chairman Sunil Mittal told PTI that the company was in the process of finalising commercial arrangements for offering ‘triple play’, which is currently being extended to its fixed-line customers in Gurgaon on a pilot basis. “When we go into the final commercial mode which will happen in the next 4-5 months, then anybody who has an AirTel connection can get Triple Play,” Mittal said. It has 1.5 million fixed line customers currently, which will go up to 2.5 million next year...

Can anyone in Gurgaon give me a feedback on this. Also is this going to be through IPTV ? How is IPTV compared to Cable TV or even DTH..?

Also:
Reliance Communications Ventures (RCoVL) plans to roll out IPTV services in India by the end of 2006, and may rope in Microsoft funding. It is also buying up content developers

In addition to negotiating distribution partnerships, the telco has been buying up TV and video production facilities over the last few months, including taking a 51 percent stake in Adlabs, a film production and distribution company.

"That will give it more control over the supply of video for the service -- from making sure it has enough programming to simplifying the distribution process", according to lightreading.com.

The carrier is running a trial in 20000 homes on the Microsoft TV platform and is in talks with Motorola for set-top boxes. With more than 60,000 km of fiber laid, Reliance provides the country's biggest testing ground for IPTV, and Microsoft is even talking about investing in the venture.

At an event coinciding with Reliance's recent listing on the national stock exchanges, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer spoke via video conferencing (showing off Microsoft TV) and said the company is looking at picking up a strategic equity stake in Reliance "due to the immense potential of the IPTV business in India." Microsoft and Cisco Systems Inc. have also committed to helping Reliance roll out the access infrastructure to support the service.

Reliance Infocomm has been working with Microsoft since back in 2003. The carrier planned to launch its Netway service over high-speed Ethernet connections early last year, but it has been struggling to build up its broadband subscriptions and in the meantime got sidetracked by internal strife.

 

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I really doubt it will be IPTV, just the same as your local cable tv guy, but on one bill and coming through 1 wire.I can't wait to dump my guy for better service.

 

[Sushubh]

i hate my cable guy as well.

 

[netfreak]

IPTV or not, I will switch to it if it is available. Good Cable Operators belong to endangred species

 

[blr_p]

or it might get the the incumbent cable operators to improve their game in the face of increased competition. Heh, who am i kidding here, that's such a mafia run operation that i would not be surprised to hear about cables being cut, tho it would be harder to get at Airtel's underground steel reinforced ones (in areas where its indeed underground).The only thing remaining is PRICE.How much ?We will know in a few months time 🙂

 

[mystery_inc18]

waise airtel hai toh kam toh nahin hoga, costly hi hoga,......... costlier than normal cable tv.

 

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[netfreak]

I had high hope for Dish TV too.. 🙂Its price seems to be right, In Mumbai we have to pay 350 Rs anyways. Hope MTNL/Reliance/Airtel whoever comes up with this service, has similar price, good collection of channels and GOOD QUALITY

 

[vebk]

Here's a month old article on it. This one only mentions there being 40 channels and it seems to indicate that they will provide normal cable not IPTV.

In another place it mentioned that the planned release is by November.

I think relevant details like the following will only tell us whether or not to get excited about this service.
[*]Cost, including cost of connecting multiple TVs.
[*]Variety of channels (will it include Star, HBO etc. etc. and perhaps even introduce some new channels).
[*]Will it have an electronic programme guide (EPG)? - I think that should be a must with any new cable or DTH service.
[/list]Recently I have been very happy with them, so I would definitely switch over in a second if the above mentioned conditions are favourable.

Edit: This article on the other hand pretty much seems to be saying that it would be IPTV.
Badri Agarwal, president, Infotel, Bharti Tele-ventures, said: \"We are currently testing the technology and collecting customer feedback. Based on the trial results, we will launch IPTV in due course.

\"Airtel already offers voice, data and broadband services to over 1.2 million customers across the country. As we start offering IPTV to our customers, our biggest USP over players in the cable and DTH space will be the two-way service applications like time-shifted television, video-on-demand and interactive-gaming.\"[/b]

 

[vebk]

And here is one of the lucky testers' Blog entry.

 

[wR2g4vdTjL5d]

I really think it is going to be IPTV..but can anyone in gurgaon give a feedback with the number of channels and quality. and what extra features can we expect..how much bandwidth of the total broadband bandwidth will IPTV take ..does it have the capacity to carry as much channels as cabl is able to carry -- if airtel does a good implementation of it..then i wudnt want to go for Tata Sky..

 

[blr_p]

Hmm..going by that blog, it does seem likes its IPTV.Tho i'm beginning to wonder what the definition of IPTv really is ?

 

[netfreak]

Does not matter what is actual definition. As long as I can see it on a large screen TV with good picture quality with some kind of set top box, it is all right. Anything is better then CTOs.....

 

[blr_p]

Right, you see that's the kind of sloppy attitude that leads to speeds being advertised as upto instead of at.Lack of attention to detail...chalta hai...pfffft

 

[vebk]

Ok some sort of confirmation that it is IPTV from Airtel itself, if you didn't totally believe the blog I linked to above.

Originally posted by Airtel Customer Care
Thank you for writing to Airtel Broadband and Telephone Services.

We have no time line as of now for launch of IPTV in Delhi.

We will have our Marketing campaigns once we launch here and we assure you that through them you will get the information.
Not that I expected any reply, but at least they didn't deny it outright Steve Jobs style 😉

P.s. is there any way that this thread can be placed in both in this forum as well as the DTH/Cable one simultaneously?

 

[wR2g4vdTjL5d]

Cmon people in Gurgaon. no review on this from u guys. I thought Airtel were running tests on IPTV in ur area. Can someone be generous enough to post his review.