Samart, Siam to jointly bid for channel

Samart Corp plans to join with major sports-content provider Siam Sport to bid for a licence for a commercial digital-TV news channel, Samart president Watchai Vilailuck said yesterday.

“Our partnership to bid for the licence is more than 80 per cent confirmed,” Watchai said. If the bid is successful, the channel will focus on sports news, he added.

The National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) will call for bids on 24 digital TV channel licences this year. On offer will be seven high-definition (HD) variety channels with a starting price of Bt1.51 billion, seven standard-definition (SD) variety channels with a starting price of Bt380 million, seven SD news channels starting at Bt220 million, and three SD children’s channels starting a Bt140 million.

Watchai said he was also talking with the operator of a free-TV channel on a possible partnership to apply jointly for an NBTC network-provider licence.

Moreover, Samart subsidiary Samart Engineering is looking at cashing in on the upcoming digital-TV era by taking about 20 per cent of the market for digital set-top boxes in the near future.

“We have targeted sales of about 4 million to 5 million boxes within a few years, by which time total demand for them is expected to reach 30 million,” he said.

The NBTC will use some proceeds from the digital-TV licence auction to subsidise the purchase of set-top boxes for all households to promote quick access to digital TV channels. The current price is Bt900. Samart made consolidated total revenue of Bt5.307 billion and net profit of Bt354 million in the first quarter, compared with revenue of Bt4.319 billion and net profit of Bt315 million in the same period last year. The company is confident of consolidated total revenue of Bt30 billion this year, driven by its mobile-phone sales and its business of providing information and communication technology service and solutions.