Opportunities in new digital service

Though the opinions of professionals, scholars and other experts in the satellite TV industry remain mixed, they believe that there will be further opportunities after digital terrestrial TV and mobile TV broadcasting are fully implemented, a recent seminar was told.
The seminar, “Shifting Platform ... Satellite TV and Mobile TV”, was held at InterContinental Hotel Bangkok yesterday, welcoming the latest information and success stories from across the globe.
The seminar was part of the “Digital Agenda Thailand” project initiated by the Institute of Social and Economic Policy, the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce, Thaicom and Absolute Communication & Events Co.
Eun-Ju Kim, director of the International Telecommunication Union’s regional office for Asia, said the ITU wanted to bridge the digital divide through mobile phones. There now are 5.9 billion cellular subscribers globally, accounting for 87-per-cent penetration. But in the developing countries, penetration is only 78 per cent, so the digital divide remains.
The ITU therefore wants to see analogue terrestrial TV broadcasters to migrate to digital broadcasting via terrestrial TV and mobile TV by 2015, Kim said.
“Also, mobile TV will be a key business in the future,” she added.
Suphajee Suthumpun, chairman and chief executive officer of satellite operator Thaicom, said that of the country’s 20 million households, 10.5 million had access to satellite TV via the C and KU bands.
There is still room to grow in the satellite TV market, though digital terrestrial TV will be launched in the near future, Suphajee said.
She pointed to Germany and Britain as examples of the market movement. In Germany, the number of satellite TV households in 2009 had increased to 16 million from 13 million in 2004. In the meantime, digital terrestrial TV viewers dropped to 2.35 million households from 2.6 million. Likewise, in the United Kingdom, the number of satellite TV household in 2009 witnessed an increase to 9.6 million from 7 million in 2004 while digital terrestrial TV households fell to 12 million from 14 million.
However, she said that with more flexible use of frequency bandwidth in satellite transponders, satellite broadcasting would be the backbone providing viewers with TV programmes from satellite, digital terrestrial and high-definition channels as well as mobile TV.
Content producers will also |be granted different licences for satellite and digital TV, including digital mobile TV.
In the afternoon panel discussion, satellite TV operators Nation Broadcasting Corporation (NBC), Spring Corp and NextStep said they were keen on joining the auction for operating licences for digital terrestrial TV in addition to satellite TV licences.
NBC president Adisak Limprung-patanakij said the National Broadcast-ing and Telecommunication Commis-sion’s auction process for digital TV licences must be fair for small to medium-sized content producers if big players join the bid.
Thana Thienachariya, CEO for broadcasting business at GMM Grammy, said that though ratings of satellite TV programmes had increased, advertising expenditure remained lower than for free-television channels. -
Thana said it would be great if a major advertising agency offered alternative satellite TV rating measures for the industry to boost big companies’ confidence to spend their ad budgets via satellite and subscription-based TV channels.