Another monopoly challenger on the way...

Pay-TV market has been monopolized by our great Astro up to now. Good news is that another new challenger has vowed to break this monopoly by Astro. MiTV Corporation Sdn Bhd, which will be the country's second pay television, has initially proposed to launch 50 interactive channels to the country a few months ago.

Now, MiTV announced that it is on track for a soft launch in this coming October with enough content providers to roll out more than half of its targeted 50 channels. Unfortunately to Penangites, this soft launch would be limited to only Klang Valley. However, Penang is one of the targeted market for MiTV in the near future, if their initial launch in Klang Valley succeed.

The key players
MiTV key players are chairman Tan Sri Vincent Tan Chee Yioun, the 11th richest Malaysian with assets of RM 1.14billion, owns 40 percent of MiTV. MiTV founder and deputy chairman, Datuk Rosman Ridzwan together with his management team hold another 40 percent of the stake while the remaining 20 percent are held by private investors.

Transmission gadgets
MiTV will make use of the Internet Protocol technology for their transmission. MiTV calls it the Internet protocol over ultra-high frequency (UHF). With this, subscribers can receive MiTV channels by just plugging an MiTV set-top box into an indoor UHF antenna. Access is controlled by a MiTV codefor each subscriber.

Does that mean that it is not digitalized?

This type of technology cost is said to bare only one-tenth of what Astro, the country's first pay TV operator, spends on its satellite technology. This technology is a homegrown wireless technology developed by Datuk Rosman, the deputy chairman, and his team.

The cost of the research and development, and investments in the company is around RM100 million.

Business break-even point
MiTV has said that with this lower cost technology setup, it would need only 180,000 subscribers to break-even. There are 5.5 million TV households in Malaysia, part of which Astro has a market share. If 13 percent of Astro's existing subscribers base of 1.4 million subscribes to MiTV, this would mean that MiTV have achieved their targeted break-even point.

Is this possible? With the increase of the amount of unhappy Astro's subscribers, I feel that it might be possible for MiTV to achieve the proposed target. It is time for Astro's subscribers to have their voices of dissatisfaction being truely heard and action seriously taken by Astro.

However, is MiTV proposed strategy and technology used practical? Did MiTV understate their break-even point? Whatever it might be, let's just sit back and watch the show...

By the way, anyone experienced Astro's phone spam recently? It is said that Maxis provided your number to Astro, I am wondering if users other than Maxis experienced such a spam?