KUALA LUMPUR, July 18 — What began as an ideal marriage could be less than rosy for last year’s landmark partnership that combined pay TV channels with fibre broadband links into homes.
While the deal clearly strengthened the incumbent position of Astro and fostered rapid expansion of Time home fibre linkages, past contractual terms — which still apply — are proving to be a drag for consumers ready to embrace even faster Internet speeds, The Malay Mail has found.
The benefits under the Astro ipTV-Time package are pretty obvious — combining two major services into homes, allowing them to leverage on each other and cost savings for the consumer.
Calculations by Astro show that savings amount to over 40% for the customer when compared to the charges for the two separate services. This calculation remains true today but evolution within the fibre broadband industry is making such comparisons moot.
Going beyond the Astro ipTV-Time package, TimedotCom Bhd is now offering faster Internet speed of 100Mbps — while the former package remains capped at 24Mbps. Further, TimedotCom’s packages are cheaper.
Since the Astro ipTV-Time package — like most such offers — involves locking in the customer for either one or two years, a customer could rightly be able to upgrade to faster TimedotCom offers once the lock-in period ends.
But the subscriber can’t. Any Internet speed upgrades — even after the lock-in period — must be within the Astro ipTV-Time package and capped at 24Mps, due to contract restrictions between the two service providers, even though the actual upgrade involves just a simple flick of a switch at TimedotCom’s end.
For faster broadband packages, the subscriber will need TimedotCom to channel another fibre link into the home — and ending up paying for double Internet connections if the Astro ipTV-Time package is maintained!
Complementary strengths now diverging
The landmark partnership between Astro Malaysia Holdings Bhd and TimedotCom Bhd aims to leverage on each other’s strengths and also address some key weaknesses.
For Astro, the ipTV fibre service lets customers received more high definition channels and also gets rid of the external satellite dish — apart from largely reducing transmission interruptions due to “rain fade”.
Further, Astro is able to counter one critical threat from rival Telekom Malaysia Bhd — which had packaged HyppTV channels with its Unifi fibre broadband services — and also new player ABNxcess.
For TimedotCom, Astro’s extensive household reach is a major boon to expand its operations and increase earnings. Now that it’s ready to capitalise on this advantage with faster and cheaper fibre broadband offerings, its past deal with Astro stands in its way — with consumers losing out.
Acknowledging that industry offers had evolved far more rapidly than expected, an Astro representative said: “We work hard to offer more choices and better value for consumers via the Astro IPTV offering. We are in continued discussions with our broadband service providers to ensure that our Astro B.yond IPTV offering remains competitive.”
