Sardinia based ISP Tiscali has launched a 50 channel IPTV service in three cities in Italy, based largely on the UK Homechoice acquisition that it made last year. Homechoice puts many broadcast programs into VoD for a limited period, and the Italian Tiscali TV will offer all TV, like a network PVR, up to 48 hours after it has been shown, some of it in High Definition. However this new service will also offer a hybrid DVB-T set top so that it can also pick up digital terrestrial TV services in Italy.
The MyTV channel personalization features of Homechoice will also be present in the new service which will launch in Rome, Milan and its native Cagliari, where it will be free of charge until March 31st. By March 2008 the service will emerge in Turin, Florence, Naples, Catania and Bologna and Tiscali CEO, Mario Mariani says that the service will gain an 11% penetration of its ISP accounts by 2009.
The service is only available on unbundled DSLAMs which are supported by multicasting routers, which for Tiscali in Italy means only 300,000 homes, which Mariani says will soon rise to double that during 2008. An 11% share suggests up to 66,000 IPTV customers by 2009.
Tiscali will offer the public broadcast channels from RAI, as well as adding Sky Italia channels later in 2008. Negotiations are also underway with Mediaset.
Tiscali will be up against the original Fastweb, the new Wind Telecomunicazioni service, provided on Alcatel equipment using Microsoft Mediaroom middleware, and the Telecom Italia IPTV service Alice, making it the world’s most competitive IPTV market, along with France.