IPTV Launch Checklist: Your Guide to a Compliant Launch in India in 2025

IPTV Launch Checklist: Your Guide to a Compliant Launch in India in 2025

by | Jul 24, 2025 | IPTV End to End, News

Your complete IPTV installation checklist for a secure and profitable launch in India. Ensure compliance and protect your content with our expert guide

The Ultimate IPTV Installation Checklist for Indian Broadcasters

Launching an IPTV service in India is a significant revenue opportunity, but it’s also a complex technical and regulatory undertaking. Without a comprehensive plan, operators risk costly delays, security breaches, and severe regulatory penalties. This IPTV installation checklist is designed for B2B decision-makers at Indian cable TV companies, MSOs, and broadcasters. It’s a no-fluff guide to navigating the critical steps for a successful, secure, and compliant launch.

We’ll move beyond basic setup and focus on the strategic pillars that ensure long-term profitability and operational stability: infrastructure, security, and monetization, with a special focus on the mandatory compliance requirements from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

Why a Detailed IPTV Launch Plan is Non-Negotiable in Today’s Market

Entering the IPTV market without a meticulous launch plan is like navigating the Mumbai local trains during rush hour without a destination, chaotic and risky. The primary risk is not just technical failure but business failure. Piracy can erode up to 30-40% of potential revenue, while non-compliance with government mandates can lead to fines or even the suspension of your license to operate.

A strategic IPTV launch plan addresses these risks head-on. It transforms a technical project into a predictable business venture by:

  1. Mapping Dependencies: Understanding how your Subscriber Management System (SMS) must integrate with your Digital Rights Management (DRM) and billing platform.
  2. Ensuring Compliance from Day One: Building regulatory requirements, like those in TRAI’s Schedule 10, into the core architecture, not as an afterthought.
  3. Forecasting Realistic Costs: Accounting for everything from server hardware and content delivery networks (CDNs) to the crucial investment in a robust, on-premise DRM solution.
  4. Defining the Customer Experience: Planning for seamless content delivery, from user authentication to playback on multiple devices.

Ignoring this planning stage is the single most common reason for launch delays and budget overruns.

Core Infrastructure: The Foundational System Requirements for Your IPTV Service

Before you can deliver a single stream, your backend infrastructure must be rock-solid. These are the non-negotiable system requirements for a scalable IPTV service.

  1. Headend & Transcoding: This is the heart of your operation. You need powerful servers to receive content (from satellite or fiber), transcode it into multiple bitrates for adaptive streaming (HLS/DASH), and prepare it for delivery.
  2. Middleware & Subscriber Management System (SMS): Your middleware is the brain, managing the user interface, EPG (Electronic Program Guide), and service packages. It must integrate deeply with your SMS, which handles subscriber authentication, billing cycles, and package entitlements. This integration is vital for controlling who gets access to what content.
  3. Content Delivery Network (CDN): Whether you build your own or partner with a provider, a CDN is essential for delivering smooth, buffer-free streams to subscribers across different geographical locations. For IPTV, a unicast delivery model requires a robust CDN to handle individual streams to each user.
  4. On-Premise Servers: For full control, security, and compliance, an on-premise or private cloud server setup is the preferred model in India. This ensures all data, especially sensitive license key transactions and user information, is stored within Indian territory, a key requirement of Schedule 10. This gives you complete control over your operational data and security posture.

The Critical Checkbox: Integrating Schedule 10 Compliant DRM Security

Here is the most critical checklist item for any Indian operator today:

TRAI Schedule 10 compliance is mandatory. Your IPTV service must be protected by a DRM system that meets the specific, stringent requirements laid out by the regulator. Failure to comply is not an option.

Old or foreign-hosted DRM solutions are often insufficient because they don’t meet the specific local mandates. Your DRM is not just a security tool; it’s a license to operate.

Your DRM on-premise solution must include:

  1. Multi-DRM Support: The system must natively support Google Widevine, Apple FairPlay, and Microsoft PlayReady to securely deliver content to every device, from Android STBs to iPhones.
  2. On-Premise License Server: The license server, which provides the decryption keys to authenticated users, must be hosted within your infrastructure in India. This guarantees data sovereignty and allows for direct auditing by regulatory bodies.
  3. Forensic Watermarking & Anti-Piracy: Beyond encryption, your solution must have advanced anti-piracy features. This includes forensic watermarking to trace content leaks back to the source, fingerprinting, and anti-screen recording technology to prevent unauthorized copying.
  4. Auditable Reporting & SMS Integration: The DRM system must be able to generate detailed reports for monitoring and auditing purposes. Crucially, it needs to be integrated with your SMS to verify that a license request is coming from a valid, paying subscriber. This creates a closed-loop, auditable system that TRAI requires.

Choosing a pre-audited, Schedule 10-compliant on-premise DRM solution is the fastest and safest path to market. It removes legal ambiguity and ensures your technical framework is built on a compliant foundation.

Content & Monetization: Finalizing Your Go-to-Market Strategy

With your infrastructure and security locked down, the final step is packaging your service for the market.

  1. Content Acquisition: Secure the rights for the live channels, VOD content, and local exclusives that will attract your target audience.
  2. Packaging and Pricing: Define your subscription tiers (e.g., Basic, Premium, Sports Pack) and pricing strategy (e.g., SVOD, TVOD). This logic will be implemented in your SMS and enforced by the DRM.
  3. Client Applications: Develop or procure user-friendly applications for your target platforms (Android TV, iOS, Web browsers, etc.). The user experience on these apps is a key differentiator.
  4. Marketing & Launch: Prepare your marketing campaigns to attract your first subscribers. Highlight your unique content offerings and the superior, secure viewing experience you provide.

Real India Use Case: How a Regional MSO Secured Their IPTV Launch

A mid-sized MSO in Gujarat was preparing to launch a new IPTV service targeting over 100,000 households. Their biggest challenge was the tight deadline to comply with the new Schedule 10 mandate. Their existing content security was not compliant.

By choosing a deploy-ready, on-premise DRM solution that was already audited for Schedule 10, they bypassed months of potential development and legal consultation. The provider’s local Indian team facilitated a rapid integration with their existing SMS and headend within weeks.

The result: They launched on schedule with a fully compliant, secure platform. The integrated forensic watermarking immediately helped them identify and shut down a small piracy leak within the first month of operation, protecting their premium cricket broadcast rights and securing their revenue stream from day one.

Ready to Comply and Protect Your Content?

Don’t let regulatory hurdles and security risks delay your IPTV launch. Our on-premise DRM solution is designed specifically for the Indian market, fully compliant with Schedule 10, pre-audited, and ready for rapid deployment.

For more on how IPTV End-to-End solutions help providers like yours win in competitive markets, check out our related post: IPTV End-to-End 101 Series: How Small ISPs Can Successfully Deliver EPG Like Jio

Secure your revenue and your license to operate:

  1. Book a Live Demo: See how our DRM integrates with your SMS and protects content in real-time
  2. Contact Our India Team: Speak with our local experts who understand your market and technical needs
6 Key Benefits of Multi-DRM Explained

6 Key Benefits of Multi-DRM Explained

by | Sep 20, 2023 | News

Having covered the fundamentals of DRM and looking into popular DRM systems such as FairPlay Streaming, Widevine, and PlayReady, let’s now take a look at the concept of multi-DRM. Specifically, let’s understand why multi-DRM is essential and what it can do for your streaming service!

Why Multi-DRM?

In the last few articles of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to DRM series, we learned about the fundamentals of DRM and about popular DRM technologies such as Apple’s Fairplay Streaming, Microsoft’s PlayReady, and Google’s Widevine.

We also learned about how these DRM products target specific ecosystems and have specific requirements for the streaming protocol used (HLS vs. MPEG-DASH), players, security restrictions, etc.

Now, put yourself in the shoes of the CTO of an upcoming streaming service which needs to use DRM to protect their assets. What questions does this CTO need to answer?

  1. Are we going to stream in MPEG-DASH, HLS, MSS, or a combination of the three?
  2. Are we going to package each asset in both mp4 and ts for MPEG-DASH and HLS, respectively? Or, do we use CENC and CMAF and use that for both MPEG-DASH and HLS?
  3. Which players are we going to use for Web (HTML5), Android phones/TVs, Apple (iOS and tvOS), Roku, SmartTVs (Samsung, LG, etc.), Amazon Fire TV? What support do they have for DRM?
  4. What does my transcoding + packaging ecosystem look like? Are the transcoding and packaging steps integrated into the same service? Does it output the streams/assets in the formats that I require? Or, am I using a JIT packager, and how does it handle DRM?
  5. If I use CMAF and CENC, does my ecosystem support AES-CBC cbcs mode throughout? Why is this important? Well,
    • Apple FairPlay supports only AES-CBC cbcs mode.
    • HLS supports only AES-CBC cbcs mode (irrespective of CMAF)
    • Widevine and PlayReady support both AES-128 CTR cenc or AES-128 CBC cbcs modes.
    • MPEG-DASH with CMAF supports both AES-128 CTR cenc or AES-128 CBC cbcs modes.
    • MPEG-DASH without CMAF supports only AES-128 CTR cenc mode.
  6. How do the above decisions impact customers on legacy hardware?
  7. How do I keep track of all the changes in the ecosystem’s different components and ensure that it doesn’t have a ripple effect on the rest of your streaming pipeline?
  8. How do these changes impact the user experience? How does it impact start-up times and latencies?
  9. Do these DRMs support all my business models – my service needs support for AVOD, SVOD, TVOD, PVOD with the ability to Geo-Block and proactively revoke licenses under certain conditions.
  10. Scale? If I spin up my own license servers, am I going to scale when I need to?
  11. Above all, what is this going to cost me?
    • What are we going to pay in terms of license fees, technology, infrastructure changes, and workforce hiring and training?
    • What is the time-to-market?
    • How easy is it to deploy a system-wide change?
    • How is it going to impact my customer’s UX when something changes or goes down?

Is Your Head Spinning Yet?

Well, take a minute to pause and remind yourself that the list of questions pertains only to DRM.

And we haven’t still talked about the CMS, ingest, transcoding, packaging, storage, CDN, playout, players, analytics, ad-insertion (client/server-side), payment portals for SVOD/TVOD/PVOD, and so many more pieces!

Multi-DRM Can Help You!

In a fragmented and complex ecosystem such as DRM, which has so many inter-dependencies, I feel that it is crucial to pull in the experts, take their help, and focus on growing your business rather than tear your hair apart!

This expertise is provided by multi-DRM vendors who specialize in untangling and simplifying DRM deployments across a variety of players, streaming formats. They have close partnerships with transcoder and player companies (less friction this way), and closely monitor updates in the technology ecosystem to stay ahead of their competition and transfer the benefits to you.

Let’s look at some of the benefits of using multi-DRM vendors to manage your DRM ecosystem.

1. Multi-Format And Multi-DRM Support

Most multi-DRM vendors provide support for MPEG-DASH, HLS, and MSS streaming protocols along with support for Widevine, PlayReady, and FairPlay Streaming. This makes it easy to cover the entire ecosystem from one place instead of a DIY approach to DRM.

2. Keeping Up With DRM Improvements

Multi-DRM services track and manage DRM providers’ latest improvements and changes in technologies such as FairPlay Streaming, PlayReady, and Widevine. This ensures that you have access to the latest features in a smooth and efficient manner (without affecting your customers – this is key!)

3. Centralized Place To Manage Your License & Business Rules

Instead of hopping between different CMSs’ to manage your business/license rules, you now have access to a single CMS where you can set all your business rules, etc. and manage your assets across multiple DRM systems.

4. Partner Support

A significant benefit of using multi-DRM services is that they maintain healthy relationships with many important players in the streaming ecosystem, such as companies that deal with transcoding, packaging, CDN, playout, etc.

Quite often, you’ll find Multi-DRM vendors announcing partnerships with other companies to ensure that their DRM software comes either pre-integrated when you buy another service (such as an Android or iOS player), or with a well-tested and supported SDK to ease integration-pains (we’ve all been there before!)

5. Scalability And Availability

Instead of maintaining license servers, key stores, etc. in a DIY-fashion, when you sign up with a multi-DRM vendor, the problem is essentially theirs. They have the teams and infrastructure working 24×7 to make sure that your service doesn’t go down. High availability and scalability are typically guaranteed, and this will be in the multi-DRM provider’s SLA.

6. Reduce Your Time To Market

When you launch a new service, you’ll probably (well, most likely) have a zillion things to think about and juggle simultaneously. By outsourcing your DRM to a reliable multi-DRM vendor, you can cut down on your time-to-market in an increasingly competitive OTT space!

In Conclusion

There are a whole lot of benefits to choosing a reliable multi-DRM vendor to help you with your streaming service. I think the most significant benefit is having a team of experts ensuring that a critical component of your service is running correctly!

I only covered a few of the benefits. I am sure each of the multi-DRM vendors has its specialized services and features that go above and beyond what I’ve mentioned.

Thank you, and see you next time!