MUMBAI: American firm IQPC will host a conference focussed on the IPTV industry in the US. IPTV and Beyond: The Future of Broadcast Technology will take place from 18 to 20 April in San Diego, California and will feature best practices from companies that have actually completed successful IPTV deployments.

The conference aims to help attendees capitalise on IPTV by showing them how to implement it, how to identify the potential for their organization, how to develop a content strategy for their services, and how to understand the economic benefits and challenges related to IPTV.

Companies that will participate include Accord Media Group, ACN, Advanced Media Strategies, Alcatel, HBO Latin America Group, Motorola, MTV Attendees will learn about the economic benefits of delivering IPTV over RF in FTTP networks as well as how to differentiate IPTV from standard TV to customers.

Speakers will dwell on the significant platform and technology trends affecting IPTV carriers going forward as well as why content protection is so important and how it can protect revenue for the service provider.

A report from Infonetics says that IPTV is set to skyrocket to 53.7 million subscribers, $44B in service revenue by 2009. In 2004, service providers worldwide spent $304 million on IPTV-related services infrastructure, growing to almost $4.5 billion in 2009.

The number of IPTV subscribers worldwide will grow to 53.7 million in 2009. The number of IPTV subscribers in North America will increase 12,985 per cent between 2004 and 2009. According to IP Television Magazine in the 1st quarter 2005 there were: 2.1 million IPTV users worldwide, 150 million broadband users worldwide, more than 240 carriers providing IPTV services, and more than 25 manufacturers producing IP set top boxes.