KUCHING: Telekom Malaysia Bhd (Telekom) has signed an agreement with twenty content providers yesterday to offer content for its soon-to-launched Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) to High Speed Broadband (HSBB) subscribers.The launch will be held at Merdeka Square, to reflect the dawn of a new era for telecommunications services in the country OSK Research Sdn Bhd (OSK Research) said in its research report that the IPTV service will be available to all HSBB subscribers for free for a period of three months until June 2010.
Telekom’s high broadband bundle would cover 1.3 million premises by the end of 2012 which are already covered by Astro with over 50 per cent share of the pay-television market.
It was noted that aside from the local to air (FTA) carriage, there would be no overlap with Astro in terms of the international content where the latter enjoyed a slew of exclusivities including HBO, Discovery, AXN and the recent extension of the video-on-demand (VOD) that could potentially be a key selling point with subscribers.
The research house also noted similar channels offered on StarHub and Singtel where Telekom would be the first to bring to Malaysian viewers such as the BBC Knowledge, BBC Lifestyle, CBeebiers, Star Chinese Channel, Channel [V] Taiwan, DWTV Asia and Channel News Asia.
However, Telekom remained tight-lipped about the price of its new high broadband service although it said that it would be affordable.
The market had previously speculated that the monthly subscription for the bundled offering, comprising of fixed line, broadband and IPTV would be in excess of RM200.
On the other hand, it was understood from the management that some 160,000 premises have already been passed for HSBB where the service would be first made available in areas of Shah Alam, Taman Tun Dr Ismail, Subang Jaya and Bangsar.
Work was undergoing for 44 exchanges of the 95 earmarked areas for HSBB nationwide.
The research house pegged Telekom’s target price at RM0.33 with a neutral recommendation. While the news flow for HSBB should sustain the positive sentiment on the stock, it would weight heavily on Telekom’s margins over the next two years.