Up until the early 1990s, it was not thought possible that a
television programme could be squeezed into the limited
telecommunication bandwidth of a
copper telephone cable to provide a
video-on-demand (VOD) television service of acceptable quality, as the required bandwidth of a
digital television signal was around , which was 2,000 times greater than the bandwidth of a speech signal over a copper
telephone wire. VOD services were only made possible as a result of two major technological developments:
motion-compensated DCT video compression and
asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL)
data transmission. Motion-compensated DCT algorithms for
video coding standards include the
H.26x formats from 1988 onwards and the
MPEG formats from 1991 onwards. Motion-compensated DCT video compression significantly reduced the amount of bandwidth required for a television signal, while at the same time ADSL increased the bandwidth of data that could be sent over a copper telephone wire. ADSL increased the bandwidth of a telephone line from around to , while DCT compression reduced the required bandwidth of a digital television signal from around down to about . The combination of DCT and ADSL technologies made it possible to practically implement VOD services at around bandwidth in the 1990s. Cisco retains the IP/TV trademark. Telecommunications company
US West (later
Qwest) launched an IPTV service called TeleChoice in
Phoenix, Arizona in 1998 using
VDSL technology, becoming the first company in the United States to provide digital television over telephone lines. The service was shut down in 2008.
Internet radio company
AudioNet started the first continuous
live webcasts with content from
WFAA-TV in January 1998 and
KCTU-LP on 10 January 1998.
Kingston Communications, a regional telecommunications operator in the UK, launched Kingston Interactive Television (KIT), an IPTV over
digital subscriber line (DSL) service in September 1999. The operator added additional VOD service in October 2001 with Yes TV, a VOD content provider. Kingston was one of the first companies in the world to introduce IPTV and IP VOD over
ADSL as a commercial service. The service became the reference for various changes to UK Government regulations and policy on IPTV. In 2006, the KIT service was discontinued, subscribers having declined from a peak of 10,000 to 4,000. In 1999,
NBTel (now known as
Bell Aliant) was the first to commercially deploy Internet protocol television over DSL in
Canada using the Alcatel 7350
DSLAM and middleware created by iMagic TV (owned by NBTel's parent company
Bruncor). The service was marketed under the brand VibeVision in
New Brunswick, and later expanded into
Nova Scotia in early 2000 after the formation of
Aliant. iMagic TV was later sold to
Alcatel. In 2002,
Sasktel was the second in Canada to commercially deploy IPTV over DSL, using the Lucent Stinger DSL platform. In 2005, SureWest Communications was the first North American company to offer
high-definition television (HDTV) channels over an IPTV service. In 2005,
Bredbandsbolaget launched its IPTV service as the first service provider in
Sweden. As of January 2009, they are not the biggest provider any longer;
TeliaSonera, who launched their service later, now has more customers. In 2007, TPG launched their IPTV service in Australia after a limited beta. By 2010, iiNet and Telstra launched IPTV services in conjunction to internet plans. In 2008,
Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) launched IPTV under the brand name of
PTCL Smart TV in
Pakistan. This service is available in 150 major cities of the country offering 140 live channels. In 2010,
CenturyLink – after acquiring
Embarq (2009) and Qwest (2010) – entered five U.S. markets with an IPTV service called Prism. This was after successful test marketing in Florida. Later in 2010,
Bell Canada (a major division, if not the largest division of
BCE) announced it would begin offering residential and business/commercial customers in Montreal, Quebec and Toronto, Ontario IPTV over a number of different modalities, including
fibre to the home,
fibre to the node and
DSL. This flavour of IPTV would be packaged with other services and branded as Bell Fibe, providing Canadian customers with everything from local analogue trunk connectivity (
POTS), to
DSL and
fibre Internet to TV service via IPTV. Bell further announced in the September 13th (2010) press release it would begin deploying fiber optic Ethernet to homes in
Montreal and
Toronto. Bell has since continued to install fiber optic Ethernet to homes (fibre to the home) across
Ontario and
Quebec, Bell Canada's two largest customer territories. Bell was very successful with the deployment of the Bell Fibe product offering. Many customers in Ontario and Quebec switched from legacy (
coaxial)
cable companies to Bell's Fibe product because of Bell's marketing around IPTV and their at-home wireless PVR offering. Bell's wireless PVR would permit customers to place a TV anywhere they wanted - as long as they had a power outlet. Bell Fibe TV commercials would show young families watching TV outside on the couch with large 70+ inch LCDs and their Bell Fibe wireless PVR. In Brazil, since at least 2012,
Vivo has been offering the service Vivo TV Fibra in 200+ cities where it has FTTH coverage (4Q 2020 data) . Since at least 2018, Oi has also been offering IPTV under its FTTH service Oi Fibra. Also, several regional FTTH providers also offer IPTV along with FTTH internet services. In 2016,
Korean Central Television (KCTV) introduced the
set-top box called
Manbang, reportedly providing video-on-demand services in
North Korea via quasi-internet protocol television (IPTV). Manbang allows viewers to watch five different TV channels in real-time, and find political information regarding the
Supreme Leader and
Juche ideology, and read articles from state-run news organizations. ==Markets==