MUMBAI: It all depends on where you look at it. In countries such as France, Spain and Italy, IPTV has the potential to be a genuine revenue-generating service as it fills a gap in the Pay-TV market.

For countries like the US and the UK, however, the revenue potential for stand-alone IPTV services will be much more limited.

Market research firm eMarketer estimates that the total number of broadband households worldwide will grow to approximately 422 million by 2010. Of that number, 139 million will have sufficient bandwidth to be able to receive IPTV. This number does not include cable Internet subscribers.

So if one subtracts cable Internet subscribers and other broadband subscribers receiving less than 2Mbps of bandwidth, by 2010 approximately one-third of all broadband subscribers worldwide will theoretically be able to receive IPTV.