Interview with Michael Lantz, CEO, Accedo Broadband
What value does your product Accedo Application Provisioning Solution add to an IPTV installation?
Our product enables an operator to distribute value added applications in a cost efficient way to any STB. We have integrated it with all the leading STB manufacturers and many middleware platforms. 
What kind of value added applications are IPTV service providers deploying?
Value added services are largely confined to gaming in IPTV deployments. Within that we see multiuser games in demand. With the traditional broadcast networks it was not possible to have multiuser capability. Over the IPTV it can be done easily.
How has the gaming and related applications bit done so far in the IPTV segment?
After the movies, gaming is the most interesting application for end consumers. We normally get 20-25% of subscriber base that play games on a monthly basis. It’s a very very high usage of casual gaming on the TV. TV is created for light entertainment. People like to play games like Suduko, Poker, etc. while waiting for their favorite programme to start.
Where do you typically source your games from?
We have game partners all over the world. Long term, in 4-5 years, we believe that we will mostly see game developers from Asia, where we see tremendous development at the moment. Mainly in China, Taiwan, Korea or in India where there are developers for online and mobile games and now branching into IPTV. We are also working with an Australian company.
How do you share the revenues between the operator, the developer and yourself? What revenue model do you have?
I cannot tell you any specifics about revenue sharing. It depends on the efforts put in. If the operator commits more to marketing and sales efforts, the higher their revenue share will be. If we do the marketing and the branding, our share will correspondingly be higher. Our main revenue model is based on scale, the number of subscribers. But if they want customization of the solution we charge them for that. Otherwise we just set up the service and connect them.
Obviously your focus for a while is games. But across all your IPTV applications, how many downloads have happened so far and how would you break them down by application type?
We have a strong focus for games because that is what our customers are asking for at the moment. We have other applications like weather services, horoscope, food and drink recipes, etc. In terms of usage, games are the most interesting for us. We are constantly monitoring the market however. In terms of downloads we had in 2007, there were 4 million downloads of Accedo games globally. This year we expect that to at least double.
Are we going to see HD games on TV screens soon?
HD game is already a reality. We have worked with Amino to provide HD games. We have some HD gaming deployment in US as well. The major requirement is that the operator deploys HD compliant STB.
What kind of APIs do you have in IPTV market for developers? Is it something like Java or XML?
Neither of them really. I would love to work with Java for applications and even the Flash. There is a lot of lab testing on the APIs but no one has really commercially deployed it. At the moment we are stuck with the traditional systems which are either some sort of uniquely developed middleware API or we do it in a browser which is essentially an XHTML type of browser with Java script and some markup language. There we can do the actual execution on the server side if that is not sufficient for game.
Why are applications like VoIP and Video Conferencing not being deployed on the top of IPTV services? Surely the technology must be available for these things in the market.
Applications like video conferencing demand two way high speed bandwidth connections. DSL connections are asymmetric with lower upstream speeds. So they won’t support these applications well. Another issue is that of the CPE. IPTV providers are not interested in subsidizing the equipment necessary for video conferencing, etc. In addition, IPTV is a residential play video conferencing is confined to the enterprise markets.
What is the biggest benefit of IPTV as far as you are concerned?
The main benefit with IPTV is that you can essentially have the personalized content. On top of that you also have the upstream capability making it interactive. So personalization and interaction are the main advantages.
