Deutsche Telekom AG (NYSE: DT) has set itself an aggressive new IPTV subscriber target of 500,000 customers by the end of this year, CEO René Obermann announced at the carrier’s annual International Press Colloquium in Germany.

The German incumbent says it ended 2007 with 150,000 orders for its Entertain IPTV service, of which 116,000 had been connected. That represents significant growth of 100,000 orders during the fourth quarter of last year, as DT ended September 2007 with just 50,000 orders. (See DT Misses IPTV Target.)

It seems, then, that the carrier’s decision in August last year to rename and revamp its IPTV offerings, including a 25 percent price cut for its entry-level package, has worked. Prior to the product reset, the service was called T-Home Complete and had attracted, on average, fewer than 15,000 orders per quarter since its original launch in late 2006. (See DT Cuts Its IPTV Price.)

Now DT is looking to build on that fourth-quarter surge in demand by signing up another 350,000 customers to its IPTV service during 2008. And it has plenty of customers at whom to pitch the service -- DT ended 2007 with more than 9 million retail DSL customers in Germany.

The operator signed up almost 2 million DSL customers in 2007, growth that pleased the CEO. “After a catastrophic 2006, our broadband business is on the right track,” Obermann told reporters.

Achieving its year-end IPTV customer target may still leave DT short of a place in the Light Reading Top Ten: IPTV Carriers, as the service providers at the bottom end of that listing are likely to be topping the 400,000 customer mark by the end of this year. (See Top Ten: IPTV Carriers, French Dominate IPTV Top Ten, and IPTV Top Ten Honorable Mentions.)

DT has also updated on iPhone sales in Germany and released new subscriber numbers for its domestic and overseas mobile business, T-Mobile International AG , which reported significant growth in the U.S. (See T-Mobile Boasts Subscriber Growth.)

— Ray Le Maistre, International News Editor, Light Reading