[Satellite News 09-02-11] MNC Sky Vision has reached one million DTH subscribers in Indonesia, one of Asia’s potentially biggest growth markets for satellite communications. The company has historically grown on its subscriber base by around 40 percent annually in recent years and expects this trend to continue.

With Indonesia providing an exciting market environment for pay-TV in Asia, Sky Vision is planning to launch HD services to its customer base — an effort that Sky Vision Vice President Handhi Kentjono expects will fuel more demands for satellite capacity.

  “We will start to launch HD services later this year and are planning to have a bouquet of 10-16 HD channels,” Kentjono told Satellite News. “I believe it requires a dedicated bouquet of channels to be attractive to subscribers. I also want to make HD content available for progressive download via video-on-demand. For the HD MPEG4 box, we are upgrading to the DVR single tuner. Once we have educated the market we will look to deploy a full-blown DVR multi-tuner device.”

   With strong growth expected and new capacity demands based on HD, Sky Vision has adopted an interesting technological approach to its service. Kentjono admits the major challenge it will face is the migration to MPEG4. “This is a progressive undertaking as we want to make sure that we can preserve the existing MPEG2 services for existing subscribers, as we move to the higher compression of MPEG4 and expand our service offerings. It will allow us to have more capacity for new services in the future. That is our number one focus; it is also a measure of progress of the business,” he said.

   Sky Vision is transitioning to a new subscriber management system, which aims to give the company more data analytics on its subscribers so it can more accurately cater to customer needs. The company also is preparing for multi-screen services. Kentjono said he is looking to see how his company can better optimize the monetization of its current content library and sets Sky Vision apart by generating interest in 3-D TV services.

   “HDTV is a good platform to have, as it enables us to offer customers an improvement on picture quality, but we are rather conservative towards the exploitation of HD even though we are moving towards the deployment of an HD box,” said Kentjono. “An HD box will offer more in terms of the PVR feature rather than HD content, however, for 3-D, we have always been very optimistic about its prospects. 3-D TV offers a different viewing experience. I am confident it will gain positive reaction in Asia.”

   Due to Indonesia’s demographics, using wireless technology also makes sense for the operator. Indonesia spans across 9.8 million square kilometers, with more than 19,000 islands and more than 13,800 occupied. It presents a set of unique challenges for a company like Sky Vision. “Without wireless technology we are really not able to exploit the market as fast as we want. S-band spectrum is ideal where there are rain fade issue is prominent. We want to have an efficient return path, and cellular technology present a cost-effective approach to provide the return path. Over 20 percent of the population, and it is increasing very rapidly, are able to access the Internet through their mobile device. There is no question that mobile usage will increase tremendously for the Internet access. It is important for us to take advantage of this for in-home services via Wi-Fi,” said Kentjono.

   Kentjono added that he would look to incorporate technologies other than satellite as it aims to become part of the broadband market in the country. Sky Vision is undergoing trials for hybrid satellites using Ku-band with terrestrial return path, while using S-band for broadcast. “We would like to exploit Ku-band for the region for broadband IP to facilitate progressive download so we can supplement our S-band broadcast. Secondly, for terrestrial want to use the cellular network both GPRS, EVDO and ADSL to participate in a high growth broadband potential in Indonesia,” he said.

   Media consumption habits in Indonesia are still strongly dominated by television, with more than 95 percent of media consumed through TV. If Sky Vision wants to increase its Internet content viewing, it will need to increase the cross-section of content available on broadband as well as TV. “We’re not yet sure whether the content on the Internet will be subscription based or advertising based, but we have strategies to optimize it,” Kentjono noted. “We will create more awareness and flexibility of the viewership,” he says.