IPTV had almost 1.5mn subscribers by mid-2005, up from around 1mn paying customers at the beginning of the year according to the latest analysis from Point Topic. That represents subscriber growth of around 40% in the first sixth months of 2005. "Point Topic data shows a worldwide total of 97.1 million DSL lines at the same date, giving IPTV a penetration of about 1.5%," says John Bosnell, Senior Analyst at Point Topic, "so there is some room for growth." There are a number of factors that can make it difficult to deploy and sell IPTV to the consumer. "Some key markets are stalled at the regulatory hurdle, there are infrastructure and kit supply issues in others and in all markets there will likely be battles against other well established suppliers of TV programming," continues Bosnell. From a worldwide perspective, the IPTV picture is varied. Hong Kong (441,000 subscribers as at 30 June 2005) is currently the only area where IPTV can boast significant market numbers. Some key large markets like Korea and Germany have yet to start.  In others IPTV is in trial phase like China (up to 100,000), serving niche operators as in the USA (200,000) and the UK (24,000) or slowly building subscriber numbers in more accomodating and mature markets like France (270,000). "With plenty of launches expected in 2006 and wider access to high speed DSL I believe that IPTV will start to make significant gains in the coming months," concludes Bosnell. Point Topic defines IPTV as TV programming delivered over IP broadband networks to a television set.
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