MTNL, which currently claims to have approx 6,000 subscribers on its IPTV service, has launched a video calling service called V Spyk. The services will be available to subscribers at Rs 499 per month, which includes IPTV, VOIP and 50 free calls and 50 MB broadband services. MTNL hopes to target 10,000 subscribers by December 2008, talk about under-achieving. The telco also plans to offer interactive education and e-shopping over IPTV shortly. The move comes as MTNL was plagued by the surrender of 3.5 lakh landlines in 2004-`05, the PSU had initiated offers for its subscribers and cut down the number of surrenders to 2.5 lakh in 2005-`06. The numbers finally came down to 1.4 lakh surrenders in 2006-`07. According to the Hindu,  the deal is a revenue share with Aksh Opticfibre retaining 75% and MTNL retaining 25% of the revenue. Aksh will provide the set-top box and manage content alliances with TV broadcasters.

The move also comes in light of TRAI’s recent letter notifying MTNL that being a Basic Service Operator it cannot offer value added services like IPTV. MTNL doesn’t have a Universal Access Service License (UASL) and will have to fork out Rs 401 crore inorder to be eligible for the same. Presumably, they may have got Aksh to pay for some of it and hence the disparity in revenue share. We had earlier reported MTNL launching its mobile TV service.

Nikhil adds: The video calling service was on display at Convergence India. Some TV channel was doing a story on the service: