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Our Bureau

New Delhi, Sept. 7 Bharti Airtel has awarded a contract to US-based telecom equipment vendor, UTStarcom, for supply of technology for launching Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) services.

Bharti is planning to launch IPTV services by the end of the year in eight cities, starting with Delhi and the National Capital Region.

The size of the contract was not revealed.

IPTV is a system where an interactive digital television service is delivered over an Internet connection instead of the traditional method of transmitting it through a cable network.

Users will also get new services such as video on demand, where they can watch their favourite movies for a fee.

They can also pause, fast forward and rewind live and recorded content stored on a remotely located server by the service provider.

Since IPTV delivers TV channels in digital form, the quality of TV viewing is expected to be much better.

However, regulatory uncertainty has been holding back operators from deploying the service in a big way.

Till date, only MTNL has launched the IPTV service in Delhi and Mumbai.

With the TRAI recently clarifying the policy issues related to IPTV, more companies are expected to launch the service, including cable TV operators.

UTStarcom’s RollingStream solution will enable Bharti Airtel to offer IPTV bundled with the operator’s existing broadband and voice services, which can all be consolidated into a single bill sent to customers at the end of each month.

“We are happy to team with UTStarcom to offer IPTV and other new services to our customers in India,” said Mr Atul Bindal, President of Airtel Broadband and Telephone Services.

“UTStarcom’s RollingStream solution has proven technology to support our requirements in rolling out IPTV service in India. We are running our IPTV trials in Gurgaon and have received a favourable response from customers participating in these trials.”

Earlier this year, UTStarcom announced a three-year contract through collaboration with Aksh Optifibre to deploy its IPTV solution with MTNL.

In addition to its deployments in India, UTStarcom has commercial IPTV deployments with China Telecom and China Netcom in China and Softbank in Japan.

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