Calcutta IPTV - soft launch any day now?

Details: Alec Barton; Category: Consumer Ecosystems; 11 April 2007; 10501 views

Pune is the only Indian city currently enjoying IPTV. Calcutta may soon become the second, as BSNL-controlled Calcutta Telephones is now making the arrangements for nearly 1.4 million potential customers to subscribe to 2Mb bandwidth services...

Internet Protocol television may make its debut in Calcutta within the next few months, with a "soft launch" expected in the next few days. Telephone lines delivering content at broadband speeds are the ambition of Calcutta Telephones, a subsidiary of BSNL. At the moment, only Pune of the Indian cities has IPTV.

Calcutta Telephones Chief General Manager is S K Chakraborty. He is, perhaps unsurprisingly, confident of what is expected of his IPTV service: "Consumers will get DVD quality picture and CD quality sound via their IPTV connections. Even with a 600kb/s bandwidth, there will not be any disturbance."

BSNL has invested considerable sums of money in preparing for IPTV in Calcutta, namely more than US$6.9 million. Its subsidiary will eventually be offering a basic package for 1.4 million fixed-line subscribers, more specifically, a 2Mb/s bandwidth at a cost of US$4.5 per month. For the time being, however, the target will be 2.25 million customers. They will have access to Calcutta Telephones library of some 5,000 films in English, Hindi and Bengali. Video-on-demand will be one of several value-added services which will also be available.

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