[Satellite News 02-24-09] Satellite pay-TV operator NTV-Plus is at the forefront of the market in Russia. The operator already has attracted about 600,000 subscribers, and Dimitry Samokhin, director general of NTV-Plus, sees plenty of opportunity for expansion. “We believe the total number of households which could be interested in any type of satellite pay-TV service in this country could be around 10 or more million, but this is in a long-term perspective. If we compete or co-operate with Tricolore (another DTH operator) or do any other movement towards the lower end of the market, we can gain several millions of subscribers.”
    Samokhin spoke with Satellite News about the development of pay-TV services in Russia.

Samokhin: We think the growth figures will have the same dynamics over the next year that we have had over the previous years. In 2008, we added more than 120,000 new subscribers. These figures will be much dependant on which market segments we plan to concentrate on. Right now, we are working with a premium audience and have very high ARPU (average revenue per user) figures. We expect that the growth will continue at the rate we have now, but we also plan to look more attentively on other segments of the market. Analyzing the developments on other territories, we can see that the lower ARPU segments are emerging in other countries, particularly in Eastern Europe. Entering these segments will definitely result in much bigger figures in terms of subscriber numbers, so we will try to implement different approaches to the market in different countries.

Samokhin: We started a new HD approach in the company targeted on giving more advantages to our HD subscribers. Now all the HD channels are divided into packages. One package is a classic pay-TV package, and the second package is a free HD package. So anyone who has bought an HD receiver from our company will gain the access to some free HD channels and more than 10 free terrestrial Russian channels, no matter whether they have money on their account or not,  for the lifetime of the satellite. The price of our pay-TV HD package also became more attractive and very competitive.

Samokhin: We have launched PPV (pay-per-view) service and we are planning to increase the number of PPV channels. … We also have a new approach for selling HD boxes. The development of PPV and a different approach to selling HD, these are our main targets. We are looking at interactivity as well as providing new information channels to customers.

Samokhin: We plan to continue our relations with Thomson and introduce an advanced features box. Simultaneously, we are in the process of negotiations with other suppliers in order to give more flexibility to our users. We have already discussed our new approach in selling HD subscriptions and we are confident that the market will react in a positive manner. I think this is a revolutionary approach when someone can start receiving the free HD and terrestrial package from the moment he has purchased the HD box. Then if the subscriber wants to see other channels he can always buy the subscription to other HD and SD packages.

Samokhin: We do feel that pay-TV competition in the Russian market is growing. The main area of this competition is the content. There is now much more competition in terms of acquiring specific premium content. At the same time, the main competition comes from classical cable operators. IPTV is developed much less in this country.

Samokhin: We technically launched our sports channel on mobile. The problem with DVB-H TV is that none of the operators has been licensed at the moment to provide such a service, and the problems with the licensing still exist. Due to that, nobody for the last several months can get this license and start selling this type of service. When these licensing issues are resolved we will be ready with mobile TV channels.