Goldstone Tech plans IPTV units in Asia, Europe

Goldstone Technologies plans to roll out Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) services in 11 countries by the end of 2008-09, President and CEO Rajesh Kalidindi said today.

"We are targeting south-east Asian and European countries for offering regional content. There is a huge demand for Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Gujarati, and Punjabi content in these regions," he said in an interview.

The company has done extensive study on demographics of Indian Diaspora to identify regions to launch IPTV services.

Goldstone Technologies recently launched the service in Thailand. "We will roll out IPTV services in Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Japan, New Zealand, the UK, France, Germany, Israel and Spain in the next 11-18 months."

Technology infrastructure, including availability of bandwidth, in these countries is as good as it is in the US and other developed countries, he said.

"There is hunger for Indian regional content from migrants of these countries," he said. The company is likely to roll out IPTV services in another 10 countries in 2009-10, but he said the plans have not yet been finalised.

Goldstone Technologies has chosen the subscription model to offer IPTV services and is targeting 75,000 subscriptions by the end of 2008-09.

The company also plans to supply the set-top boxes. It has tied up with local telecom operators and Internet service providers to offer these services. The company has also signed a distribution and marketing pact with UK-based Quad Play Media to launch the service in Europe, he said.

"Local operators will share 15 per cent of the total revenues, 30 per cent will go to content providers (broadcasters) and rest will come to us."