Telecom Italia has begun large-scale trials in four cities of an IPTV service, and claims to be working towards a commercial rollout later this year in 21 Italian markets. The service will utilise a 4 Mb/s ADSL connection to bring IPTV to more than four million households.
TI's IPTV service will have live Serie A and Serie B Italian soccer, likely to be a major selling point in a soccer-mad country. The service also will feature a strong video-on-demand (VoD) offering with a video library of 600 films (30 new films added each month), a time-shifting ability so that users can pause and then restart their shows, and a wireless keyboard for Internet access via that TV. WiFi, supporting as many as five PCs, also will be included in the package.
Telecom Italia's move into an IPTV service mirrors that of many telecommunication companies: BT for one announced at the end of June it was teaming with Microsoft TV to deliver TV over broadband in the U.K.