MANILA, Philippines - For 2011, ABS-CBN Corp. subsidiary, SkyCable, has allocated P1.5-billion capital expenditure (capex) for its Cable Television (CATV) business.
Half of the amount will be for the roll-out of its digital TV service nationwide and half, for boosting its broadband subscriber growth, announced SkyCable marketing head Rodrigo Montinola the other day.
As of last year, Sky Cable has half a million subscribers, mostly in Metro Manila. At least 85 percent of cable users in Metro Manila are already using digibox, which is essential in viewing digital TV programs. The CATV firm intends to increase that from to 90-95 percent by the end of 2011.
The company is also intent on increasing its broadband subscriber numbers. "We had flat growth from 2006 to 2009. We started growing again only last year, where we had 35,000 subscribers," he pointed out. "Our target is to grow our broadband subscribers significantly by about 70,000 by the end of this year."
The SkyCable executive made the announcement during the launch of DigiBox iRecord, a personal video recorder (PVR) set - top box capable of simultaneously recording two TV programs while the subscriber watches a third.
The box has a 320-gig hard drive that can store up to 145 hours of standard definition video or 85 hours of high-definition (HD) video equivalent to over 70 movie titles, over 100 episodes of one-hour TV shows, or over 80 documentaries of National Geographic HD. Special features include slow-motion and frame-by-frame playback of recorded shows.
Elsewhere in the world, TV viewers are already favouring PVRs. "We see the trend in countries like the US where millions of households use TiVo. In Asia, the PVR versions are Singapore's StarHub and Malaysia's Astro. The Philippines should not be left behind," he noted.
Skycable projects their new service would haul in at least 3,000 users in the first year of rollout. They are targeting medium-heavy TV users, busy working people who can't always catch up on the schedules of free TV or cable.
Existing SkyCable subscribers in Metro Manila can get the DigiBox iRecord for a refundable deposit of P4,999 plus P399 service fee of using the Digibox iRecord on top of their monthly CATV fee.
The payment allows subscribers 3 months' access to FoxCrime HD, Star Movies HD and NatGeo HD and the option to upgrade their old DigiBox to the iRecord.
