The Estonian cable TV and DTT provider Starman will launch its own TV
channel on February 22. The commercial-free service, called Neljas TV (Fourth TV), will only feature acquired programming from the US and UK and be available to the company’s 132,000 cable TV and 6,500 DTT subscribers (as of September 2007). Starman hopes that the channel will encourage customers to opt for its cable TV services, as opposed to those of the country’s other major cable TV company STV (100,000 plus customers, running a parallel network with Starman in major towns) and the IPTV provider Elion (60,000 customers, most of them in households that could also pick Starman’s cable TV and broadband). Neljas TV should provide a boost to the struggling Estonian DTT network that the country’s two leading commercial channels have so far refused to join.
