[Satellite News 04-28-09] French TV platform BIS could look to offer more services via satellite in the next year, Gregg Bywalski, marketing and development director at BIS’ managing company, AB Groupe, told Satellite News.
    Bywalski, who is responsible for developing BIS, said the company is considering new satellite perspectives in its growth strategies. “Triple play by satellite is now feasible and possible. We might be looking into this and offer the first triple-play offer by satellite. This would be Internet, telephone and TV via satellite,” he said.
    BIS, which launched its service in late 2007, remains about 80,000 subscribers short of its goal of 200,000, and the operator attributes its shortfall to not carrying high profile channels such as M6, Bywalski said. “The platform has finally made an agreement with two of the main channels of the digital terrestrial offer, M6 and W9. It had been missing and with the addition of two new thematic channels as well in the basic offer, Encyclopedia and Animaux, we now consider the offer. A lot of people were expecting these channels before subscribing to the offer.  Now, we definitely hope to reach 200,000 subscribers by the end of the year,” he said.
    New BIS channel additions will be kept to a minimum. “We are focusing on completing the offer with some other channels. We are not going to bring in 100 channels, as that is not the point of this offer. The point is, we want to keep the price as it is,” ByWalski said.
    Idate analyst Stéphanie Villaret believes there is a strong market opportunity for a low cost platform like BIS. “BIS is trying to reach the section of French TV households, that as of yet, have not gone digital. More than 10 percent of French households are still watching analog TV. That works out to be around 6 million households. The objective of all the players right now is to take advantage of the analog switch-off, which is forecast to take place in 2011 in France. They all want them to provide them an offer, which includes DTT channels. There is an opportunity for players to gain market share in the pay-TV market.”
   BIS finds itself in the middle of the dynamic French pay-TV market with leaders such as Canalsat, Orange TV and TNTSat. While difficult economic times may be ahead, Bywalski believes the operator launched the service at the right time. “We were a year ahead and looking at what what was coming up. We launched the offer bearing in mind that people paying 40 euros to 60 euros ($51.83 to $77.75) a month for a pay-TV offer was way too much. We knew that there was a lot of people willing to downgrade to a more basic offer with maybe less channels but a big difference in terms of pricing. That is why we launched the service at 4.90 euros a month. I think we have proven to be right. The big pay-TV platforms are seeing their churn rates increase every year,” he said.    BIS has pushed back its launch of high-definition (HD) services from 2009 to 2010. “We are focused on implementing some new channels over the year in the basic offer as well as some optional channelsm so for 2009, we are going to focus on the content,” he said.
    Another key priority for BIS is to keep its service rates down. “We don’t want to become another Canalsat. They have a very good position. They are leading the market. We don’t want to go where TPS went two to three years ago. Our goal is to be the alternative offer, the low-cost offer, and we want to remain the cheapest offer available on the market,” Bywalski said.