Siemens Exec Predicts More European IPTV Deals.(Chris Coles of Siemens AG predicts more agreements based on Internet Proocol Television services)

Siemens is confident it will be able to do one or two more deals this year with telcos in terms of deploying IPTV solutions. Chris Coles, CEO of Myrio, a Siemens subsidiary, tells Inside Digital TV, "In terms of other major telcos in Europe, we are continuing to court those that have not aligned with anyone else yet as well as those who are growing impatient with their earlier choices. I would expect before the end of the first quarter 2007, at least one or two more deals in Europe as well as three or more in the rest of the world." The company recently signed a deal with T-Com Croatia.

Coles believes being part of Siemens is a major advantage for the operator. "Being part of the whole Siemens machine gives us a much-enhanced ability to offer service providers end-to-end solutions -- everything from the initial design phase right through deployment and then ongoing support for that network, and then the IP subsystem on top of it," he says. "Siemens has a long and distinguished history in voice and data communications. Video is a logical addition to that and the benefit is by virtue of the prior experience and skill in these other facets of communication. You now have an entity that is able to look across all of those diverse traffic types, patterns and consumer experience, and bring a holistic view to bear."

Siemens competes in the same space as Microsoft TV, and Microsoft is providing stiff competition, announcing many contracts with telcos for IPTV. In recent weeks, both Bluewin, a longstanding Microsoft TV customer, and T-Home (a division of Deutsche Telekom) have launched IPTV services based on Microsoft. Coles says, "Everything that I see is consistent with early-stage challenges in the entry of a player into this space. Video is a well-established consumer paradigm. The advent of IP technology into video will have similar effect to what we saw in the voice market, giving more power, choice and simplicity ultimately from the provider side but also to the consumer. The historical pricing models are likely to find pressure points that they weren't experiencing historically. I think Microsoft will push ahead, but the rest of us in the market are by no means standing down and conceding anything."

Capital-Expenditure Plans

With Microsoft now establishing itself in this space, the onus will be on players like Siemens to offer strong competition. So, what new services and applications are Siemens developing?

"There are a number of technologies coming down the path, like refinements to MPEG-4, including the system on chip boxes as well as a number of new and interesting content-management approaches like Video-on-Demand (VoD) and client-side personal video recorder (PVR) capabilities. These are going to grab their share of our capital-expenditure spending in the R&D area," he says. "I think a lot of our product-and-service focus right now is centered in this next generation of set-top boxes (STBs) as well as client-side PVR capabilities. It's also how we bring communications services on a more integrated basis into the television experience, whether it be traditional voice or messaging services. Those are all quite relevant, and then the TV takes on a more interactive dimension as a result of the networks, the STBs and the software that supports that."

During the next 12 months, the company aims to develop its platform and, ...