As well known, Internet Protocol television (IPTV) refers to a system through which Internet television services are delivered using the architecture and networking methods of the Internet Protocol Suite over a packet-switched network infrastructure, e.g., the Internet and broadband Internet access networks, instead of being delivered through traditional radio frequency broadcast, satellite signal, and cable television (CATV) formats.

Turkish biggest ISP TTNET has selected IPTV set-top boxes from Motorola, as well as the latest version of the latter’s KreaTV application platform, to bring enhanced video services to Turkish subscribers. Turkish market has been waiting IPTV service for years.

I’m very interested in IPTV business and that’s why I asked the current and the future prospects to my collegue -from Doğan Media Group- for his expert opinions. Emre Çınar is a digital media and IPTV specialist, who wrote his dissertation on IPTV and Monetizing Methods of IPTV, was awarded with Msc. in Digital Media Production by Oxford Brookes University, School of Technology.

“First of all, the required service has some significant points to furnish household with minimum bandwidth. For instance, a household with 4 people has average 2 outputs to consume AV content and 2 computers to reach internet.

In Turkey, internet Service Providers are delivering the required bandwidth way more expensive than the other EMEA or EEMEA countries on the continent. The very first problem of providing IPTV is to make available required bandwidth avaliable cheaply to optimum households at the country.

Secondly, there is not enough content abundance for backing and glamorizing the service for potential users. Literally there are major content delivering media moguls in Turkey to enhance the service when it is online.

Basically, the service of IPTV requires a STB and a minimum 16Mbit bandwidth to get the service efficiently. I have acknowledged bandwidth problem, furthermore, the other problem for the service is to establish a solution for Set Top Box selection. Turk Telekom makes a stride and agreed with Motorola to solve the issue.
IPTV has numerous advantages from the current streaming infrastructure used in Turkey.

Additional to its new features, such as VoD, distance learning, interactive TV, its most significant benefit for Turkish market is billing options(micro payment etc.). Due to its young demographics and low household income; Turkey could be one of the major markets for IPTV. “

Nowadays, Turkish ISP’s TTNET, Superonline and TurkNET are planning to invest on IPTV. I do believe that it will be a smart investment because IPTV will cover both current TV broadcasts and Web TV as we use today in the next period of Web 3.0 . It will be the new way of accessing broadcast media. The future.

Thanks to Emre Çınar and you can read more about IPTV on his blog.