UTStarcom said this week that it had landed another Chinese IPTV rollout in the Shanxi Province, with an initial deployment going to 30,000 subscribers in Xian, the local capital city, with China Telecom.
UTStarcom says that it continues to win a substantial percentage of all new Chinese IPTV deals and that today over 80% of subscribers are subscribing on its RollingStream IPTV system.
The new service offers 80 channels of live, broadcast television; 24-hour time-shifting capability; 10,000 hours of video-on-demand (VOD) content; and valued-added services including karaoke and gaming.
On the one occasion that we have heard UTStarcom discuss its experience in IPTV, at a conference last year in Budapest, it seemed a very credible and knowledgeable supplier, which genuinely understood IPTV as well as any Western supplier. UTStarcom is quoted on the US Nasdaq market and if it carries on like this with the trust of the local nascent Chinese IPTV community, it may well become a hot stock to watch.