Reliance Communications has tied up with Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) for its IPTV venture, which is launching in March next year: Reliance will pay Microsoft about $500 million in license fees to use its IPTV service software, which delivers HD video over phone lines to home TV sets, reports AP. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said the tie-up targets the mass market in India, whereas in the Western countries IPTV mostly focuses on affluent customers.

Updated: RapidTVNews: Reliance is also backing the Bluemagic DTH platform which was scheduled to launch by the end of 2007, but has slipped to first quarter 2008. But much less noise has been made about that service. It will use the Measat-3 satellite to beam MPEG4-compressed programming into the sub-Continent.