Bundesliga to Help Kick Internet-TV Into the Future

"We're on the brink of a television revolution," the president of Bitkom -- the German association of telecommunications and new media industries -- proclaimed in Berlin this week. The reason for Willi Berchtold's enthusiasm? Deutsche Telekom has secured the rights to broadcast German national soccer league matches over the Internet in a bid to boost its "triple play" offering of high-speed Internet bundled with basic telephone and television services.

At present, Telekom can only offer triple play to a small number of customers -- a company spokesman gave an estimate of 3.3 million households. But the company hopes to see this number almost double by the end of the year, and to have 1 million triple-play customers by 2007.

After earlier reports of delays to Telekom's T-Home Internet television system, the company now expects to be ready for the start of the Bundesliga season on Friday. The telecommunications giant said it will be able to broadcast 70 channels on its system, though this should increase to as many as 100 once licensing agreements with other stations have been signed.

Beginning of a boom

For Bitkom, Telekom's Bundesliga deal represents the beginnings of a boom in Internet-TV services in Germany. Berchtold pointed to a study by the market research group Gartner, which predicts that by the year 2010, 2.8 million German households will watch TV via the Internet. Presently, the market for Internet-TV in Germany mainly consists of downloads.

The telecommunications industry association says there's room for improvement, as Germany currently lags far behind other EU countries, such as Italy and France, in catching the Internet-TV bug. According to Bitkom, France will claim the top spot on the European market by the end of the year with some 1.7 million Internet-TV subscribers.