TM to offer latest US television shows

Friday, June 18, 2010, 08.57 AM


By Jeeva ArulampalamPublished: 2010/06/18

The pricing of the video-on-demand, including TV series, will be competitive, says Telekom Malaysia executive vice-president for consumer


Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM) (4863) hopes to attract consumers to take up its Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) service by offering them the latest television series from major studios in the US at affordable prices.


While mobile operator Maxis Bhd has announced plans to launch its IPTV service in the third quarter of this year, incumbent operator TM has provided its IPTV service as part of a triple play offering for its high-speed broadband (HSBB) customers since March this year.


TM's IPTV customers in the four existing HSBB locations - Shah Alam, Subang Jaya, Bangsar and Taman Tun Dr Ismail - will not be charged for the IPTV channels and video-on-demand (VOD) until the trial period ends this month.


Although TM was unable to disclose the future pricing mechanism for its IPTV service, its executive vice-president for consumer Jeremy Kung said pricing of the VOD will be competitive.

"VOD is not just for the latest movies but also series. We will get the series 24 hours after they have been aired in the US, so this is targeted at those who are downloading series from sites. Downloading will definitely take longer," he told Malaysian reporters earlier this week on the sidelines of the CommunicAsia 2010 in Singapore.


With some 22 channels currently, Kung said TM will add more premium channels and increase is VOD titles.


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TM group chief executive officer Datuk Zamzamzairani Mohd Isa said while Maxis will be a competitor in the retail space, the mobile operator will be a TM customer on the wholesale space for HSBB.


"There must be a balance on infrastructure and content being made available on a wholesale basis. So eventually, the market will have to find that balance. Initially everyone will try to be defensive on what they have, but eventually consumers will have more choice and they will decide," he said.


To help content innovation, Zamzamzairani said TM is working with local content developers.


"What we are doing is offering the back office support to supply that content. We don't guarantee the content but we can help them in terms of distribution and billing," he said.

TM also launched its global ethernet services (GES) on Tuesday to strengthen its leadership position in the industry.

GES is a networking solutions which provides reliable and secured point-to-point, point-to-multipoint and multipoint options connection via extensive global network covering locations such as London, Hong Kong, Singapore, Amsterdam and the US.


The service is designed to deliver high bandwidth capacity and provide flexible and scalable bandwidth ranging from 1Mbps to 1Gbps.


TM Global executive vice-president Mohamad Rozaimy Abdul Rahman said the GES solution would benefit the government and enterprise market as well as the financial and manufacturing industries.

"It allows organisations to connect using TM's multi-service Ethernet access, which is built on our metro optical network, to our global Internet backbone," he said.



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