Germany: Households with IPTV services is forecast to rise fo 1.2 million by the end of 2009 and to 1.8 million by end of 2010

[iptv news] The number of German households receiving IPTV services is set to reach 1.2mn at the end of this year and rise to 1.8mn before the end of 2010, according to new figures from the German Association for IT, Telecommunications and New Media (BITKOM), released at the BITKOM IPTV summit in Berlin.

These figures compare to an estimated 180,000 subscribers to IPTV services reported by BITKOM for the end of 2007 and an estimated 536,000 subscribers for the end of 2008. "Television over the Internet is the television of the future," said Achim Berg, Vice President of BITKOM during his speech at the IPTV summit. "The online generation expects individualisation and interaction that only Internet television provides."

The three major providers of IPTV on the German market are incumbent Deutsche Telekom, HanseNet and Arcor. Deutsche Telekom recently reported that it had sold 600,000 subscriptions to its IPTV service 'T-Home Entertain' by the end of the first quarter of this year, while HanseNet had passed 30,000 customers for its own service 'Alice homeTV' by the end of March. No subscriber figures for Arcor were available at the time of publishing.

Germany poised to reach 1.8mn IPTV subs by end-2010