India's telecom industry is on the brink of commercially launching IPTV services around the country, but with 18 major languages and hundreds of different dialects, the operators are struggling to acquire content that will sell. Unlike the country-wide popularity of Bollywood movies, which total about 1,000 a year, television programming has traditionally been very regional. IPTV providers like Mahanagar Telephone Nigam, Bharti Tele-Ventures and Reliance Infocomm have decided to roll out services in select cities with regional variations accounted for in their content. The cable market in the country is made up of hundreds of regional operators that cater to their markets specifically. The potential for IPTV to compete in the market is huge moving forward, as the technology's ability to offer an infinite number of channels would allow it to cater to any language.
For more on IPTV's rocky road in India:
- see this article from Light Reading