TM Net subscribers get exclusive business channel

Thursday 01 Dec 2011
Capital TV, a new business and finance channel, makes its debut today but it is exclusive to Telekom Malaysia Bhd’s (TM) high-speed broadband subscribers as part of its HyppTV offering, The Star reports.

TM has an agreement with Online Dynamics (M) Sdn Bhd for the provision of Capital TV.

Capital TV has hired more than 30 people. Its studio is located in Petaling Jaya. Pravin Kumar, formerly from the national news agency Bernama, has been appointed editor-in-chief of Capital TV. It is learnt that Capital TV would get its news feed from Bernama and Bloomberg TV.

Adding more content is TM’s means of bracing for competition from other players in the market place. TM, Astro and DeTV  are currently providing TV channels based on a pay-TV concept.

However, by the middle of next year Maxis Bhd is slated to launch its Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) services while ABN, a new digital cable TV operator, is expected to begin offering TV services too. Another company YTL Communications Sdn Bhd is supposed to launch IPTV services sometime in 2012.

TM has 200,000 subscribers for its Unifi (high-speed broadband) service and about 80 percent of its users are viewers of HyppTV. The IPTV service was launched in March last year and has 15 free channels, 29 paid channels, 14 video-on-demand categories and11 with interactive applications.