Spotlight: PCCW plays defense, then offense

PCCW of Hong Kong was one of the first telcos anywhere to deploy IPTV commercially, and Ted Hsiung, head of business development at PCCW, discussed the company's experience and future plans while speaking at at the IPTV World Forum Asia last week. Hsiung, as reported at Light Reading, noted that IPTV starts as a defensive play for telcos, but it must evolve into an offensive strategy. PCCW took some unique steps to IPTV success, launching with a free set-top box offer for customers, and also focusing strongly on content and the creation of its own content security system housed in its network rather than in the STB.

The company also has done a lot of work with opt-in interactive advertising, something IPTV carriers in the U.S. are likely to be working on in 2009. PCCW now has about 932,000 subscribers, giving it one of the largest IPTV customer bases in the world. Next up, Hsiung said PCCW will be focusing much more on home networking.

For more:
- Light Reading has this report

Related articles
PCCW yanked plans for a telecom/media spin-off
China has a pretty active IPTV market overall