Reliance Infocomm: Smart IPTV Strategy

Reliance is venturing in entertainment space in a big way as it is targeting Indian market with multi-pronged strategy. It includes customer reach and content aspect. For urban India Reliance is going with IPTV project termed as "Home Netway" with Alcatel-Microsoft solution and for rural India or areas without its fiber coverage it going with DTH termed as "Bluemagic". It can be a marvelous strategy to reduce CAPEX as well as reaching wider subscriber space. Reliance will not be able to reach all the customers at once because of huge CAPEX requirement due to Metro Ethernet Network (MEN) deployment. Moreover it won't be able to lay fiber at fast speed and meantime customer can be grabbed by MTNL, BSNL and Bharti so it is launching DTH services to expand its reach.

On the content front it is slowly integrating all the entertainment aspects into its own telco strategy. Reliance has already acquired Adlabs and Primefocus for the post-production, distribution and exhibition of movies. On the gaming front it has acquired Paradox Studios for developing gaming content used on mobile and broadband platform. Moreover Adlabs is planning to venture in Home Video segment. Reliance is also in talks with Zee and Sony for content creation and content aggregation.

Reliance is not seeing IPTV / DTH project as stand alone services or bundled services. It is planning for the convergence arena where reliance will be having presence in households with high speed network and will be providing "Smart Home Services" for all Ethernet enabled devices. Company has got CHOISpad (developed by Innomedia Technologies) which can be used to control everything in the home. CHOIS stands for Convergence based Home and Office Interactive Services. CHOISpad is a customized set top box (STB) controlled by CHOISer (remote).

CHOISpad becomes the Prime Mover, for shaping up the requirements of the Netway. Netway fibers have to bring at least a Gigabit of bandwidth near every home/office, so that it can carry almost half a gigabit worth of multicast Digital channels. To keep costs at minimum, it is necessary to provide a conventional 100 Base T, UTP cable connection to every premise. Like the electricity meter, the UTP connection at homes is actually provided through a Secure Gateway. This Secure Gateway can connect to four adjoining user premises using 100 Base-T UTP cables. The simplest way would be to directly connect the UTP cable to a CHOISpad. Practically, however, the connection will terminate on a simple unmanaged switch at the home. The Home Switch will in turn connect to many Ethernet devices via RJ-45 sockets.

Ethernet devices at homes can be PCs, CHOISpads, or any of the Ethernet/Internet appliances. For convenience the RJ-45 sockets for plugging these appliance has to be co-located with the normal electric plug points. For convenience of connecting the RJ-45 sockets in a bussed manner, the Home Switch uses Half-Duplex protocol. Any electrician can now manage even the UTP wiring at homes. This shows that the electrical accessory shops, will now stock Ethernet wiring accessories too. This will spur a commodity market for Ethernet appliances, and white goods which can be remotely configured / interrogated through the internet.