I know, I know ... you read this blog (and others) for news about IPTV and inevitably you end up reading about so many things going on in asia and Europe. But some of us live right here in the good ol' U S of A! What gives?

The fact is that Asia is the fastest growing market for IPTV with subscribers set to double in the next 12 months (Source: Gartner, March 2005), followed by Europe and the U.S. as a distant third.

Jeffrey Soong, CEO of Broadband Network Systems points out that while "Asia as a region is far from homogeneous, there are a number of common factors across many countries which have provided a fertile ground for telecommunications operators here to venture into the IPTV arena."

"First of all, telcos in Asia tend to ... be well financed and to have existing connectivity to a much larger number of homes.

"Secondly, Asia, and particularly China, is leading the world in broadband penetration growth, indicating that the bulk of global IPTV subscribers will come from this region. The broadband explosion in Asia is connected to the strong overall economic outlook for the region which is set to bring increased affluence to many countries in the coming years, fuelling growing entertainment consumption and demand for choice which is where IPTV with channel variety and on-demand capability can tap into. [Om Malik has some numbers that show this is true]

"Thirdly, ADSL with at least 6.0 Mbps to households is more widespread in Asia (95% in Hong Kong) thanks in part to geographic densities.

"And finally, governments in many countries have embraced the broadband platform and are smoothing the way for the industry."

You might say that since Mr. Soong is located in Hong Kong, he should be expected to have a bias toward projects in Asia. But what is happening in the US? The only two noteworthy projects are at SBC and Verizon -- both of which will not even begin looking for subscribers before 2006. In fact, Verizon appears bogged down with regulatory issues that they forgot to plan for. Further evidence: many of the European telco's have projects or trials that are underway in major urban areas right now.

And before I conclude, there is one other thing that we should not ignore -- many interesting IPTV and ITV software companies are European and Israeli. I have not taken the time to add up the number, but it feels to me that the UK has half of them.