Triple Play

An interesting thing I picked up from the Innovation and Exchange portion of the conference was from the President and CEO of TM NET, Michael Lai of Malaysia, who described why Asia/Malaysia, then Europe, and finally the US will approach ubiquitous communications (including IPTV) in that order. Basically, Asia is ready now. They have 50% of the world’s mobile subscriber base, and they sent 73% of the text messages (SMS) that were sent worldwide (yes, that’s right, almost 3 of every 4 sent). They also have high television and mobile penetration, and low fixed-line and broadband internet, and low pc penetration, as well. In Hong Kong, the IPTV market share just recently overtook the market share of cable subscribers.

Another presenter, Thanasis Iatrou, President and CEO of MediaExcel in Austin, also suggests that the competition of cable and satellite slows this down for the US. He is still promoting the triple play–compression, streaming, and decoding.