NTT Talks IPv6 TV at CES

LAS VEGAS -- NTT America, a wholly owned U.S. subsidiary of NTT Communications Corporation (NTT Com) and a Tier-1 global IP network services provider, today announced it will be speaking on the Planning for an IPv6 World in 2010 panel at the 2009 International CES. Cody Christman, NTT America’s Director of Product Engineering, will discuss Hikari-TV, the first large scale, commercially successful IPTV over IPv6 service. The Hikari-TV service, which is operated by NTT Plala Inc., comprises 76 channels including high definition (HD) channels, more than 10,000 video on demand titles and over 13,000 titles in its karaoke service, and is accessible to consumers via a “Broadband button for Hikari-TV” on the remote.

Utilizing the benefits of a network built on IPv6, Hikari-TV delivers high quality television to hundreds of thousands of subscriber households in Japan. NTT Plala receives live broadcasts from TV stations, encodes and simultaneously delivers the broadcasts to subscriber households over the Hikari-TV Content Delivery Platform. The real-time broadcasts of high or standard definition TV and multichannel TV are implemented using IPv6 multicast over NTT’s NGN (Next Generation Network), a closed end-to-end IPv6 over fiber to the home (FTTH) network.

Gartner, Inc. estimates worldwide subscriptions to IPTV will reach almost 20 million subscribers in 2008, a 64.1 percent increase over 20071. The growing interest in IPTV combines increased broadband penetration with the capability of integrating television with other IP based services on a home network such as Internet access and phone service, video on demand and karaoke, and opportunities to make TV interactive, ultimately making more efficient use of the broadband connection.

While demand for IPTV is increasing, the number of IPv4 addresses is decreasing. According to the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), the availability of IPv4 addresses is down to 15 percent with the number decreasing every month. It is estimated that by mid-2012 the pool of IPv4 addresses will run out, creating a sense of urgency for the adoption and implementation of IPv6. IPv6 solves the address crunch problem by offering a vastly expanded usable addresses space, including multicast address space. IPv6 also offers a significant number of benefits for the development of new IP based applications, such as IPTV.

NTT America Inc.