Bharti Airtel is going great guns into the media business. After launching the DTH service, they have started a trial run of their proposed internet protocol television (IPTV) services in New Delhi and are now planning to launch its commercial services in six cities soon, according to their top official.

President of Telemedia Services of the company, Atul Bindal told reporters during the launch of Airtel's DTH service in Kolkata "We are currently covering 1,000 households in New Delhi on a pilot basis. Issues like infrastructure capabilities and different pricing models are being tried there."

Since it requires a very high bandwidth, Airtel would restrict IPTV to metros like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad, as of now, where the broadband speeds of up to 8 Mbps are available.

When asked, Mr. Bindal declined to comment about the date of IPTV launch, but he said "We will soon be having services like IPTV, DTH, landline telephone and mobile telephony. Various combo packages are being worked out."

Airtel currently has 2.5 milion Telemedia customers for both landline and broadband, whom it plans to target with IPTV services. Mr. Bindal also added that the recent guidelines by the I&B ministry about downloading IPTV content has prompted Airtel to work aggressively on its IPTV launch.