Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大), the nation’s No. 2 telecoms carrier, yesterday unveiled a new digital Internet TV service and other products that utilize convergent telecoms technologies, allowing subscribers to access digital content via the Web from their mobile phones or living rooms.
These services put Taiwan Mobile in direct competition in the Internet TV market with the nation’s biggest communications company Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信). Chunghwa Telecom has more than 800,000 subscribers to its multimedia-on-demand (MOD) services that are carried over the Internet.
Taiwan Mobile’s new Internet TV service will be available in February and local cable TV system operator Kbro Co Inc (凱擘), owned by Taiwan’s Tsai family, which also holds a major stake in Taiwan Mobile, plans to launch the service in the second quarter of next year at the earliest, the firm said.
The Tsai family bought an 80 percent stake in Kbro for NT$36 billion (US$1.22 billion) from private equity fund Carlyle Group after Taiwan Mobile’s bid for Kbro failed to obtain the approval of the nation’s telecoms regulator.
Kbro expects the combined subscription for its Internet TV services to double, or even triple, to between 300,000 and 500,000 users next year from this year, Kbro chairman James Jeng (鄭俊卿) told reporters.
Before being choosen to be Kbro chairman last week, Jeng was president of Taiwan Fixed Networks Media (台固媒體), a fixed-line affiliate of Taiwan Mobile.
“This time, we will offer a different Internet TV service for people’s living rooms, rather than their mobile, tablet or other handheld devices,” Jeng said.
Despite the significant increase in subscribers, Taiwan Mobile vice president Cliff Lai (賴弦五) said he did not expect the new business to generate any significant contribution to revenue next year.
“It likely won’t be until 2012 that we see a meaningful contribution,” Lai said.
To compete with Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan Mobile would not rule out the possibility of coaxing the nation’s major multi-system operators of cable televisions, including China Network Systems Co (中嘉網路), to join the company’s Internet TV platform, Lai said.
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