Large-scaled commercial project of IPTV in China had started since the second half of 2005, and the IPTV project has expanded to province area from city area, and the designed user capacity amounts to 100,000. The planned capacity in Jiangsu, Shanghai, Beijing, Guangdong etc all amounts to 100,000. Accordingly, the IPTV users rose to 550,000 in China at the end of 2006.

China Netcom and China Telecom still regarded IPTV as the focus of broadband development in 2006, and IPTV commercial market started in China. However, as the operation mode is imperfect and the users demand needs to be further exploited, China IPTV market is still in the fostering period.

From the perspective of the current business development, the time shifting and on-demand broadcast are popular among the users. IPTV not only is faced with urban high-end users, but also has the strong demand potential in the rural market. In the aspect of the manufacturers, the commercial market is held by UT Starcom, ZTE etc basically in China.

China Netcom had developed small-scaled IPTV trial operation in 21 cities up to Nov, 2006. Moreover, China Netcom carried out rural long-distance education activity in the countryside of Henan via IPTV, and the activity would develop 80,000 more IPTV users. After two-year promotion, the IPTV users in Harbin Netcom had amounted to 100 thousand by the end of 2006.

China Telecom has carried out IPTV trial operation in 23 cities now, and its benchmarking project is the IPTV project cooperated by Shanghai Telecom and Shanghai Media Group, and up to Oct, 2006, the users of Shanghai IPTV had developed to be 20,000; by the end of 2006, the users had reached 60 thousand.

From the perspective of operators, Shanghai Media Group, the earliest to obtain the IPTV license, has carried out cooperation with fixed-line operators all over China. In May, 2006, CCTV obtained the IPTV license, in Aug 2006, South Media received the IPTV license, and in Oct, China Radio International also obtained the IPTV license, which will enrich IPTV program resource further and benefit the expansion of IPTV users.

More and more users will receive IPTV, the new video service mode, gradually in the future; meanwhile, telecom operators will expand IPTV content further, especially the highly interactive IPTV value-add business, such as long-distance education, online games, information service, video telephone etc, and also is shaking off the dependence on broadcasting TV programs gradually.