Spotlight: PCCW plays defense, then offense

Dan O'Shea — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 20:05:32 -0500

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

Cable show: Interactive ads need more time, Canoe awaits chief

Dan O'Shea — Tue, 20 May 2008 10:59:35 -0400

At The Cable Show-otherwise known as the National Cable & Telecommunication Association's annual trade show in New Orleans, cable TV players have been discussing the value and challenges inherent in implementing interactive advertising through the industry-wide Project Canoe initiative. The project is still in it early phases, and one piece of news out of The Cable Show is that a chief executive will be named for Project Canoe on June 1. Meanwhile, the industry continues to test interactive ads, and despite broad interest, real world deployments are not likely in the short-term.

For more:
- read this story at Multichannel News

Related articles:
- The Canoe project made some progress earlier this year. Canoe report

Interactive Advertising

Spotlight: PCCW plays defense, then offense

Cable show: Interactive ads need more time, Canoe awaits chief