The IMS Research study IPTV: A Global Market Analysis reveals that IPTV deployments globally are largely attributed to tier 1 telcos. By the end of 2014, IMS Research forecasts 40.1 million TV households will be subscribers of tier 1 telco IPTV services.

Rebecca Kurlak, research analyst and author of the study, states, “Tier 1 telcos have the advantages of both scalability and the imminent opportunity for solid ROI that has placed forerunners like AT&T and France Telecom in a very compelling position in the pay-TV environment.”

Kurlak continues, “Not only will AT&T and France Telecom continue to see uptake in their acquisition of subscribers, but China Telecom, BBTV, NTT, FREE, Neuf Cegetel, Telefonica’s Imagenio and BT will also see extraordinary uptake of their IPTV services.”

In regards to smaller telcos she notes, “Tier 2 and 3 telcos will continue to experience subscriber growth as well. In 2008, tier 2 and tier 3 telcos comprised almost 46% of subscribers. Throughout the forecast, the larger telcos will essentially be stealing honey from the smaller telcos’ bee hives by providing more services, deeper discounts and more compelling content from major studios. Hence the reason why the small telcos will only garner close to 23 million TV households by the end of 2014, half the potential of what Tier 1 telcos are anticipated to achieve.”

In addition to television household forecasts (split by picture quality and DVR functionality), the study provides detailed analysis of IP and IP+DTT STB shipments and revenues for three major global regions and three sub-regions, with further analysis on 64 individual countries. Two new features of the report include forecasts for IPTV Households by Telco Tier and segmentation of IP STB Shipments by MPEG-2 vs. MPEG-4 AVC compressions. IMS Research is the first to incorporate these segmentations in their reporting.