Pay-TV operator Astro Malaysia has signalled its intentions to compete hard in the country’s IPTV market by claiming in its latest quarterly results that it now has the widest service footprint for delivering IPTV over fibre networks in the country, with 1.4mn homes passed.
The operator, which has already built a dominant satellite TV business in the country, launched IPTV services under the ‘Astro B.yond’ brand in April 2013 via a partnership with broadband operator Maxis (more details here).
Astro’s IPTV service starts at MYR 198 (US$ 63) per month and includes ten HD channels including HBO Hits, and over 700 hours of video-on-demand content grouped into multiple box sets.
The research team at Informa Telecoms & Media (publisher of IP&TV News) estimates that Astro Malaysia already counts more than half of the country’s TV households as its customers, and predicts that it will be in 53% of TV households in 2017.
Dominant telco Telekom Malaysia does however have strong IPTV ambitions itself: the company launched its ‘HyppTV’ service back in 2004, and has since started delivering the service over Malaysia’s High Speed Broadband (HSBB) network, helping it achieve significant revenue growth.
Source: http://www.iptv-news.com/2013/06/astro-malaysia-claims-widest-iptv-via-fibre-coverage/
