Keith Jack's Blog

Koreans will soon be able to post and receive letters through the IPTV or Internet Protocol Television from as early as next year. Officials at the Knowledge Economy Ministry say they will establish a postal service using IPTV technology within this year to be commercialized in 2010. The new system will also enable users to get access to various shopping and financial services. A test run is expected around September.

Indian telco BSNL Chennai Telephones is to launch IPTV services in the city of Chennai “shortly”, according to reports in local newspaper The Hindu, with an initial offering of 140 linear channels.

KT, South Korea’s largest fixed-line and WiBro operator, has created new business opporunities combining WiBro (WiBro is the Korean version of Mobile WiMax) with other services in ways to expand its WiBro market and increase users. Last year KT kicked off a trial run of its WiBro-based Mobile IPTV, which was successful. Now it is expected among Korean WiBro operators, KT and SKT, that their WiBro business will gain momentum with the launch of Mobile IPTV service after the roll-out of 4G networks capable of providing 100Mbps data transfer rates that mobile IPTV requires.

Colombian telco UNE EPM had reached 30,000 subscribers for its IPTV service by the end of 2008, its first year of operation, and is now aiming to reach around 150,000 by the end of this year, according to reports in news portal TV Telco LatAm. UNE is now focused on expanding the service into other regions of Colombia, including Bucaramanga and Cartagena, as well as focusing on the capital of Bogatá.

According to TV TELCO Latam, Microsoft could soon add Codetel in the Dominican Republic and PRT (Claro) of Puerto Rico, both part of América Móvil, to its existing Microsoft Mediaroom deployment with Mexico’s Maxcom.