Chinese consumers are poised for a major change in the way they watch TV.

As it stands, dozens of operators duke it out by region with a patchwork of competing services—cable, Internet Protocol TV (IPTV), satellite and passive optical networking (PON), to name a few. A fragmented market is the norm in the country of more than a billion people, bit that’s changing as TV offerings are set to converge around broadband technologies.

As the world’s most-populous nation with a rising middle class, China is on the verge of a national initiative called next-generation broadband (NGB).

Broadcom’s setting the stage for operators to deploy NGB, along with an array of exciting offerings that combine the best of broadcast, broadband and over-the-top (OTT) content to their subscribers.

It couldn’t be happening at a better time: A Digital TV Research report from earlier this year shows China’s expected to have some 315 million pay-TV households by 2017. China has some 167 million broadband subscribers, with a 16 percent annual growth rate, according to October figures published by the Broadband Forum.

Broadcom has developed several standards-based technologies to deliver high quality, high-definition content in a secure, cost-effective way, while helping put in place infrastructure to ramp up China’s burgeoning broadband landscape. We’re talking about it this week at the International Coverage and Transmission Conference in Hangzhou, where we’ll demonstrate the latest in NGB innovations tailored for China.

Here’s a sampling of what we’ll be demonstrating at ICTC.

Standards Make it Happen

Broadcom’s a frontrunner in standards-setting for NGB, including active participation in the NGB working group led by China’s State Administration of Radio, Film and Television agency (SARFT), which oversees the broadcasting industry.

We’re also working in concert with other connected home organizations—such as MoCA, HomePlug and others, to bring standardized technologies to Chinese homes.

Security is a biggie in China, too, and a primary concern of broadcast content providers looking to combat piracy.  That’s why Broadcom supports the Downloadable Conditional Access System (DCAS ) standard on a full line of set-top box platforms for network integrity, enabling operators to source uniformed network equipment.

Chinese consumers are clamoring for HDTV, regardless of how they access pay TV. Broadcom’s standards-based technologies, including Full-Band Capture and MoCA 2.0, are being deployed in China to support the demand for HDTV.

Thinking Beyond Cable

In China’s big cities, cable and IPTV compete for subscribers. Telecom companies offer Internet protocol television options in addition to phone and Internet. IPTV in China reached an estimated 14 million users in 2012, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Compared to cable’s roughly 200 million subscribers, IPTV has yet to take off, but pieces are falling into place for some major growth in fiber technology that will replace Digital Subscriber Line (DSL)/copper infrastructure.

The major Chinese telecom companies—China Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile—are committed to deploying fiber access via Gigabit Passive Optical Networks (GPON), eventually enabling IPTV video services to more homes throughout China. GPON doesn’t necessitate home visits to set up service and operators can split each fiber up to 128 times from the field, offering service to more customers at cheaper rates. The range on fiber is more than 37 miles, versus copper that can only be used within a little over a mile.

Ethernet PON, or EPON, is also getting into the mix.

“[PONs] are easier to deploy than copper, consume less power, are more future proof and more cost effective,” said Doron Tal, Broadcom’s director of product marketing for xPON in the Broadband Communications Group. “They also enable the layering of additional services, with the hope of one day layering IPTV.”

In rural villages where cable and IPTV aren’t available, satellite is the only option for pay TV. Satellite technology in China is being upgraded to high-definition quality with Broadcom’s HD for satellite products. China is also working on eliminating the unencrypted, free channels available to anyone with a dish, building up the pay-TV satellite industry.

Cable, IPTV and satellite are all rapidly growing in China, faster than market researchers can keep pace. As demand for high quality, integrated connectivity in the home continues, Broadcom’s standards-based technologies will empower operators to offer their subscribers the best broadband around.

Keep up with Broadcom at ICTC in China by finding us on Facebook and Twitter and following the hashtag #ICTC.

Related:

• Broadcom Powers Huawei’s Small Cell Rollout
• Pay TV Goes Global: Broadcom Takes on Brazil
• Broadcom Enhances Standard Technology to Boost China’s Cable Overhaul
• Pay-TV in China Reaches New Heights with Broadcom Technology
• CCBN Video: Broadcom Technology Powers the Connected Home

The White House is about to give Americans a big Broadband boost.

President Obama will sign an Executive Order this week that will accelerate the deployment of broadband networks nationwide and create a new public-private partnership, called US Ignite, to develop applications that will run on those new networks.

The Executive Order, which was announced by the White House today, makes “broadband construction along Federal roadways and properties up to 90 percent cheaper and more efficient,” which will make it easier for broadband carriers to deploy networks on Federal properties and roads and speed the delivery of connectivity to “communities, businesses and schools.” US Ignite, which is comprised of nearly 100 cities, corporations and non-profit entities, focuses on developing applications for advanced manufacturing, medical monitoring, emergency preparedness and other services that will run on the broadband networks. So far, more than $60 million has been committed to the cause along with various other partners offering subsidies.

Both announcements validate the very reason Broadcom exists: to connect people to the content that matters most to them. Unfortunately, it is still challenging for many people in the U.S. to connect to broadband networks at home, work, or on the go; especially as bandwidth-hungry applications and multimedia continue increasing in use. While the U.S. population has reached 313 million people, it’s staggering that only 245 million of those people use the Internet.

YouTube’s streaming of the 2012 Summer Olympics illustrates the need for ubiquitous connectivity and high-speed services to match the growing broadband needs of content providers and explosive growth of high-speed content consumption by consumers.

The majority of the world’s infrastructure hardware runs on Broadcom technology. In fact, 99.98% of all internet traffic crosses a Broadcom chip at one point or another. That’s impressive. But what’s most important are the people who aren’t benefiting from Broadcom’s technology to learn, share, connect and advance the world we live in.

Those are the connections we must enable and we’re glad that President Obama agrees.