Pay TV operators prepare for changing times
As pay-TV business expands, international and local content providers and television operators are looking at offering so-called over-the-top service to add value and retain existing subscribers and to lure new ones.
Non-linear services including live streaming, pay-per-view, video-on-demand and “TV anywhere” applications, commonly known as over-the-top (OTT), was addressed last week by leading experts in the pay-TV industry at the “Thailand in View” forum organised by CASBAA, an association promoting multi-channel television in Asia.
Under topic “The Times They Are A-Changing ... and People Watch TV Differently”, representatives from broadcasters, pay-TV operators and international content providers agreed that OTT would become a significant trend in the near future, including in Thailand.
Thinakorn Thianprathum, general manager of TOT’s IPTV (Internet protocol television) service provider, said many youngsters were adopting new communication technology and preferred to watch TV via smart devices and personal computers connected to the Internet.
Therefore, conventional, so-called linear viewing patterns will likely to become less important in the TV industry in next 10-15 years once these young viewers are grown up.
Sura Gaintanasilp, executive vice president of MCOT, the operator of Modernine TV, said higher data-transfer speeds and improved access to multimedia services via fully equipped broadband Internet would bring about big changes for broadcasters.
“TV screens in the near future will potentially offer more functions such as e-commerce and interactive services, on top of simply providing TV programmes,” Sura said.
According to a survey by Nielsen (Thailand) revealed at the forum, the value of pay-TV business in the Kingdom is expected to grow a lot in coming years. It will also become more diverse in content, new players, accessibility and packages.
Meanwhile, CASBAA’s “Thailand in View” report noted that the pay-TV market had welcomed new players including GMM Z, CTH, RS and small cable TV operators like CCN in the Eastern region. This creates intense competition among dominant pay-TV operator TrueVisions and those newcomers.
To retain existing subscribers and lure new ones, Ong-ard Praapakamol, chief commercial officer of TrueVisions, said that since last year, his company had launched the TrueVisions Anywhere application as an added-value service. This service allows subscribers access TV programmes via a mobile-device application. There were more than 200,000 downloads in about six weeks after the launch.
James Osmund, director for non-linear products at Fox International Channels, said that apart from providing content to pay-TV operators, his company provided on-demand, online, value-added service for subscribers of FIC’s pay-TV channels via its applications such as Fox Movies Play, SCM Play, Nat Geo Play and Fox Sports Play. The company will tentatively launch such services in Thailand in the fourth quarter, after Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and the Philippines.
The rise of pay TV in Thailand also opens more doors for other businesses like Irdeto, a provider in media protection, multi-screen and revenue-assurance solutions for television operators.
Jerry Park, vice president for Southeast Asia sales at Irdeto, told The Nation that his company saw potential in Thai pay-TV market after the increase in industry players. In February, Irdeto was adopted by CTH to provide protection against piracy after CTH secured exclusive rights to broadcast English Premier League matches for the next three soccer seasons in Thailand, Laos and Cambodia.
Irdeto, a multinational company, also provides its services to TrueVisions and Thaicom’s DTV satellite-TV operator. The company revealed that it was in talks with GMM Grammy and free-TV broadcasters.
