UTStarcom, Inc. announced that China Telecom, the largest fixed-line telecom operator in China, has chosen UTStarcom's mVision end-to-end IPTV system to support its new IPTV service in China to be launched by the end of the year. The first official service launch of up to 5,000 subscribers is scheduled to be in Shanghai.

"While we don't expect revenue associated with this agreement to be meaningful in the near term, we do believe this represents a significant opportunity over the next several years," said Ying Wu, chief executive officer and president of UTStarcom China. "We believe that IPTV technology will revolutionize the way people watch TV by empowering users with the ability to choose the programs they want to watch when they want to watch them. According to a recent report from ABI Research, IPTV subscriber growth is expected to exceed 110 million people by 2010, with the Asia Pacific region accounting for more than 50 percent of the subscribers worldwide."

"We feel confident in our long-standing relationship as an equipment provider to China Telecom, which dates back more than 10 years when we started to deploy our PAS networks," Wu added. "We believe our mVision IPTV solution is a mature, field-proven platform, having been deployed by Softbank Broadband in Japan for the launch of their BBTV commercial IPTV service in July. We believe the success Softbank Broadband has had to date with mVision in Japan will translate well in China, a country with more than 1.3 billion people and a television penetration rate of more than 90 percent. The company currently has more than 40 trials underway throughout China."

The launch of the commercial service in Shanghai is the culmination of an integrated commercial trial of IPTV by China Telecom in five provinces throughout China. Partnering with Shanghai Media Group (SMG), a leading multimedia television content provider, China Telecom Shanghai plans initially to offer subscribers a service package of live broadcast television and videos-on-demand. Additionally, the service is also designed to offer subscribers "time-shift" capabilities -- the ability to pause and rewind live television, as well as an expansive amount of storage to record any program and watch on each subscriber's own schedule.