Papua New Guinea’s Click TV has suspended its satellite TV business to place effort into the delivery content via Internet Protocol.
PNG’s rural Direct to Home (DTH) customers will be affected unfortunately, whilst merger and partnership discussions are underway to expand and accommodate rural DTH customers in the future.
The TV station says they believe there is an alternate solution for the sake of the nation.
Already the latest IPTV provider in PNG, Click TV says it will place more emphasis on growing its substantial commercial customer base, which includes the new Loloata Island, Stanley Hotel and Hilton Port Moresby.
“With the eventual arrival of cheaper and faster internet, there is a need to restructure business models that enable the provision of content via IPTV services and mobile delivery,” Managing Director Richard Broadbridge said.
Click’s own ISP, Lightspeed Limited, has a residential and commercial customer base which already has content and internet offerings.
Lightspeed is the primary internet provider to many commercial properties in Port Moresby and has started to grow a VSAT customer base using iDirect throughout the country.
“We are working with our satellite provider Intelsat to migrate our services to internet and will soon be offering Cband redundancy to our existing customer base in preparation for the rainy season towards the end of the year. Click has a Cband transponder lease with Intelsat which is being converted from Television to internet Cband has an uptime guarantee of 99.9 percent and will be required during bad weather,” Broadbridge said.
Click TV’s product shift only means a change in direction from being a satellite provider to being a content provider to all, and is able to be used on any platform to deliver to the final customer.
Click provides engineering services and builds IPTV head ends, cabling and network design and implementation and recently successfully handed over the design and implementation of Nambawan Super’s new OPH towers, the home of the new Crown Hotel.
“We encourage our commercial customers to contact our head office to discuss an appropriate solution. We recommend that our commercial customers consider a future with internet delivered TV for their properties. We can assist with this,” Broadbridge added.
In March this year, Click TV’s local channel, PNG TV, brought to an end its daily news bulletin in an effort to reposition its product in “the dramatic change in the markets’ behaviour in as far as news is concerned”.
“Social media has changed circumstances in our market – cheaper internet and citizen journalism has meant that products like PNG TV are becoming lost in the crowd,” Broadbridge had stated.