For the final day of the IPTV World Forum, the conference kicked off shortly after the doors opened with an operator interview with Paul Berriman, Chief Technology Officer at Hong Kong telco PCCW.
Tony Brown, Senior Analyst at organisers Informa Telecoms & Media, opened the interview by describing PCCW as the Tiger Woods or Manchester United of the Asian IPTV industry. Mr Berriman, who collected two trophies at the IPTV World Series Awards on the evening of the opening day of the event (Best Quad Play Service for PCCW's snaap!, and Special Merit Award for Outstanding Industry Contribution), spoke about the benefits delivered by acquisition of broadcast rights for the English Premier League (wrested from its main rival, iCable), stating that this content is ten times more popular than any other content.
Paul (right) with one of his two awards
PCCW currently runs seven standard-definition and one high-definiton sports channel, enabling the telco to deliver coverage of every single game. Leveraging these rights to win dominance of the local pay-TV market appears to have been arduous however, with the company needing to install production studios and employ its own Cantonese commentators for example, according to Mr Berriman.
Sticking with the theme of effective content strategies, he also said that niche content is one of the more interesting areas of content from a profitability point of view, stating that it can often deliver the highest margins, giving the example of Indian cricket fans who are prepared to pay "significantly more" to access the content they want. Mr Berriman also echoed sentiments evinced yesterday by Victor Belov, CTO of Russian operator Comstar-UTS, in saying that the more interactive services PCCW has developed, the more difficult it is for subscribers to find and use them. However, as with Comstar-UTS, the move to a more effective user interface has ameliorated this, enabled by more advanced set-top boxes.
However, this investment-heavy approach to content begs the question - is there a meaningful return? "We've come very close to breaking even with our IPTV service a number of times," said Mr. Berriman. "And then we go and buy more EPL rights." However, he added that the overall benefit of the IPTV service in reducing churn is "huge", going on to say that PCCW now has around double the ARPU of its nearest broadband competitor, adding that it has breathed a new lease of life into its broadband services.
According to its latest figures, PCCW was on nearly 930,000 subscribers for its IPTV service 'Now TV' at the end of 2008, and is now the biggest pay-TV operator in Hong Kong, recently grabbing pole position from cable rival iCable.
