Shin Offers Low-Cost Satellite TV

By Srisamorn Phoosuphanusorn, Bangkok Post, Thailand

Jun. 26–Shin Broadband Internet (Thailand), a subsidiary of Shin Satellite Plc, is offering low-cost household satellite television dishes, and hopes the new business unit would generate 60 percent of its total revenue this year.

Touted as “the region’s cheapest Ku-band satellite TV dish”, the DTV product would make TV antennas obsolete, said general manager Tanadit Charoenchan.

“DTV offers a clearer picture over TV antennas and the price is four times cheaper than Cu-band dishes. We expect to sell up to one million dishes by the middle of 2008 and two million in 2009,” said Mr Tanadit, who is also the vice-president for finance and accounting of Shin Satellite.

“We expect to realise up to 1.7 billion baht in revenue from the DTV sales by our existing 400 distribution outlets,” he said yesterday at the official launch ceremony for DTV.

Ku-band satellite TV dish systems come with a satellite receiver (set-top box) and a remote control as well as a dish pointing at only one satellite. The company’s DTV dish, priced at 1,925 baht plus 500 baht for installation, enables users to receive all free local TV channels with digital quality.

Mr Thanadhit said DTV would primarily compete with TV antennas, not pay TV, and would target 17 million Thai households.

DTV would also allow users to send SMS messages from mobile handsets through the set-top box next month.

Shin Broadband is also considering providing WiMax broadband services through a new company.

In another development, Shin Satellite has temporarily suspended the purchasing process of a new broadband satellite, Thaicom 6, due to political tensions.

Yongsit Rojsrivichaikul, the chief commercial officer of Shin Satellite, said the company was now freezing all work related to Thaicom 6, but had not changed its plans to launch in 2009.

He also said that Shin Satellite was in talks with operators in Indonesia and Malaysia to serve as gateway operators for its iPSTAR broadband satellite services. The company is also on the verge of signing an agreement with Japan.

iPSTAR (Thaicom 5) now covers 15 countries with 400,000 terminal users.

Mr Yongsit said Shin Satellite expected to realise 100 million baht in revenue from Korea and Japan, after investing US$10 million in gateway facilities.

“We expected iPSTAR to break even in 2008, one year ahead of the initial schedule, thanks to increasing demand for broadband access,” he said.

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