Free-to-air providers on HyppTV's radar

KUALA LUMPUR: Telekom Malaysia Bhd's internet protocol television (IPTV) HyppTV, is looking to beef up its free-to-air station offerings in a move to get ahead of the competition, said TM Net CEO and executive vice-president of TM's new media division, Jeremy Kung (pix).
"We will continue with our discussion with free-to-air station providers, in a bid to add more channels in our platform," Kung told reporters after the launch of Malaysia's first Islamic on-demand channel, AlHijrah, which was offered on HyppTV platform.
At present, he said HyppTV offers a total of 119 channels, consisting of 50 premium channels, 29 free-to-air channels including radios, 18 video-on-demand and 22 interactive channels in a variety of value packages and a la-carte options. There are currently, 36 channels in high definition.
Puncak Semangat Sdn Bhd, through its subsidiary MyTV Broadcasting Sdn Bhd, is due to develop digital terrestrial TV (DTT) infrastructure and network facilities to fully digitalise free-to-air stations by 2016.
"First of all, we are already digitalised. So, there is no issue whether we are affected or not. It depends on the number of channels made available in the future," Kung said.
"For example, when they start going on digital, how many channels are they (MyTV) going to put up and how many of them will be deciding on our platform," he added.
Puncak Semangat won a 15-year concession from Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission to develop the DTT infrastructure in April.
Kung also said that the IPTV provider has not seen any impact from the non-airing of World Cup. To date, he said HyppTV has close to 700,000 subscribers.
"There is no impact. Everyone should understand that the rights to sports event like that (World Cup) will come and go. World Cup coverage bid was offered in 2010.
We did not exist at time. There is no way for us to bid for it," he explained.
On AlHijrah on demand channel, Kung said the channel is offered in high definition format and programmes are made available for viewing anytime, commercial free on channel 834 on HyppTV video on demand platform.
He said with a monthly subscription fee of only RM10, subscribers will be able to access a library full of various Islamic programmes from talk shows, documentaries as well as cooking shows in both Bahasa Malaysia and English.