MYTV is committed to meet deadline
CEO says company on track to deliver coverage to 95.3% of population
PETALING JAYA: MYTV Broadcasting Sdn Bhd remains committed to meeting the analogue switch-off (ASO) first-quarter 2019 deadline set by the government and is on track to deliver the 95.3% population coverage as agreed with the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC), says chief executive officer Michael Chan.
MYTV has covered 92.8% of the population with its digital terrestrial television (DTT) infrastructure at present.
Chan was responding to StarBiz’s article yesterday entitled “MYTV needs to meet DTT rollout deadline”, where the MCMC said it would take action against MYTV should it fail to complete the DTT rollout before the first-quarter 2019 deadline.
Chan added that with MYTV’s recent launch of DTH (direct-tohome) satellite services to complement its DTT network, this service is now also available to 100% of the population.
“MYTV has already spent more than RM511mil to date and will need to spend a further RM300mil to complete this key national project despite not securing any financing from financial institutions who saw the project as ‘not bankable’ once the government revised the leasing charges to broadcasters via the mandatory standard on access pricing (MSAP),” said Chan.
He added that Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM) had yet to revise its rates to MYTV to follow the MSAP pricing, which came into effect in January this year. This and other technical issues around the service delivery led to the dispute with TM.
Over the past few weeks, there have been reports on ongoing payment disputes between MYTV and TM, which has resulted in 20 broadcasting sites being shut down and free-to-air services in a few areas being disrupted.
StarBiz had reported that services for the free-to-air TV migration from analogue to digital were suspended in several states over disputes of non-payment between MYTV and TM.
“For the record, MYTV has already paid more than RM70mil to TM even before securing any revenue. MYTV will only be able to col- lect revenues from the broadcasters post-ASO, while TM continues collecting rental charges from incumbent analogue broadcasters.
“We see no reason for TM to suspend the transmission of digital TV services to the rakyat since ASO is coming in the first quarter of 2019. TM should allow the rakyat to experience the quality of digital TV services vis-à-vis the current analogue transmission, given that MYTV has already made the service available to the rakyat at no cost pending the ASO,” said Chan.
Chan added that as TM is a government-linked company, it should demonstrate its commitment to facilitate this key national digital TV project to make it a success so that the government would be able to realise additional revenues of more than RM3bil from the release of the 700Mhz spectrum, without incurring any cost.
Chan said that digital TV projects in most other countries were funded by the government, but in this case, the government has not provided any funding for MYTV, and neither has it incurred any additional cost for the ASO.
“MYTV has been working with MCMC on a resolution in respect of this dispute with TM and we remain committed to completing the project by the first quarter of 2019. Given MYTV’s financial commitment and our progress to date, any effort by any party to terminate this concession should not arise,” Chan concluded.