IPTV — market, regulatory trends and policy options in Europe

This paper looks at IPTV commercial offers and regulation in the five largest EU Member States (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK) and four smaller Member States with the highest broadband penetration rates ranging between 20%–25% (Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden). IPTV is in its infancy in all of the markets surveyed. France has the largest number of IPTV subscribers so far. Alternative operator Free reported 1.26 million IPTV subscribers and France Télécom 300,000 subscribers as of end June 2006 (which should be seen in the context of 23.5 million households in France). In Italy, alternative operator FastWeb reported 870,000 subscribers as of end June 2006 (22 million households in Italy). The paper discusses a number of regulatory issues related to IPTV: replicability of incumbent operators’ IPTV offers, predatory pricing, bundling, cross-subsidy by alternative operators of their retail prices from fixed PSTN call termination revenues, must-carry obligations, and net neutrality. The paper also compares the authorisations or licences an IPTV provider would need from the broadcasting authority depending on the types of services provided.