Telecom Lead Europe: Mobitel (Mtel) Bulgaria is offering television (IPTV) services to TVs, PCs, tablets and mobile phones across the country.

Mobitel Bulgaria is one of the few operators to expand IPTV services that are driven by ZTE’s IPTV platform.
According to ABI Research, the worldwide Pay-TV market grew at a steady pace in 2012 generating $238 billion by end-of-year, up from $223 billion in 2011.
The global Pay-TV market is expected to generate $304 billion in 2018 with a CAGR of 4 percent.
The Asia-Pacific region saw service revenue growth due to underlying increase in subscriptions. However, cable TV operators in North America are experiencing a decline in service revenue as result of a contracting subscriber base, despite cable TV innovations such as DVR and HDTV.

Globally, IPTV is gaining market share year-over-year while the rest of the Pay-TV platforms are slowly contracting. IPTV service revenue market share increased from 10 percent in 2011 to 11.5 percent in 2012. Cable TV market share dropped to 47 percent in 2012 from 48.5 percent in 2011 while satellite TV market share dropped around 1 percent.

The multi-screen integrated IPTV service, developed after research of Bulgarian user behavior, enables subscribers to watch videos anytime and anywhere such as in the study, in the office or on the way to work, not just in the front of the TV. The commercial use of the platform will help Mtel attract more customers.

Users can access the network through a range of terminals to enjoy live TV, video-on-demand, reserved recorded video, OTT applications and other new IPTV/OTT services.

Recently, Jake Saunders, VP and practice director of core forecasting at ABI Research, said: “Availability of superfast broadband networks and bundle offers from telcos over high-speed networks are driving the growth of IPTV adoption. IPTV market share is expected to increase to 18 percent in 2018, to generate $53 billion in revenue.”

Mtel’s IPTV platform provides a superior interactive video experience to users over fixed or mobile broadband connections, enabling Mtel to deliver significantly greater value to broadband subscribers.

Recently, Jeff Heynen, directing analyst for broadband access and pay TV at Infonetics Research, said: “Subscribers are far less loyal than they used to be. The cable TV industry is characterized more by churn than cord cutting, as subscribers take advantage of introductory pricing on satellite and IPTV subscriptions that’s 30-50 percent below their cable bills.DirecTV, Verizon, AT&T, and Virgin Media have all set their sights on existing cable subscribers, and they’re seeing their subscriber bases increase as cable TV subscriptions shrink.”

Mtel signed a five-year cooperation agreement in December 2011 to provide customized solutions for IPTV middleware, digital rights management (DRM), a content delivery network (CDN) and set top boxes. The scale of the network was expanded over several phases.

In 2012 ZTE solely constructed the biggest H.264 IPTV network in the world with over 4 million online users.

As of Q4 2012, the total user capacity of ZTE’s IPTV systems in the world had exceeded 20 million.

In 2012, according to the IPTV Market Leaders Report published by Multimedia Research Group (MRG), ZTE is ranked second in the global IPTV middleware business with an 11 percent market share.

Arvind Krishna
[email protected]