Recently, China Telecom initiated the procurement of IPTV smart set-top boxes for 2024-2025, including both 4K and 8K set-top boxes, with a total purchase scale of 20.32 million units.
Industry insiders have revealed that the procurement scale for 8K set-top boxes exceeds 500,000 units. Although the overall proportion is not high, this is the first group-level procurement by the operator, which is of representative significance. It is understood that China Telecom had already started routine testing of related products in 2023, and this formal procurement initiation indicates that the network, terminals, platforms, and applications are all ready to support 8K services.
In recent years, operators have accelerated the development of smart home businesses, which have become a new growth engine. Ultra-high-definition services, as an essential part of the smart home business, not only significantly enhance the audiovisual experience of home entertainment but also inject new vitality into the development of smart homes. IPTV is crucial as a platform for carrying both internal and external resources. Meanwhile, operators are rapidly advancing the upgrade of FTTR (Fiber to the Room) to provide ultra-wide bandwidth for 4K/8K content, fully realizing the value of FTTR. The combination of these efforts is considered mutually beneficial.