Slovak Telekom plans to add an OTT service to its offer in the very near future, according to Peter Terpak, the company’s product marketing and management director.
In a wide-ranging presentation, Terpak, who is also the marketing and content production director, Digi Slovakia, provided an overview of the telco’s move into TV, strategy and plans for the future.
Slovak Telekom began thinking about TV in 2005/6 and launched an IPTV service, branded Magio, in 2007.
However, poor coverage, leading to rejection rates of 30-40%, made it decide to launch a satellite service in 2010 order to reach the entire country.
It went on to acquire Digi Slovakia, which was a basic operation with 200,000 DTH and almost 40,000 cable subscribers, in 2013 and has since begun a move from the 4 degrees West to one degree West slot, as well as a switch from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4.
Its upcoming launch of an OTT service follows on from the introduction of multiscreen, introduced two years ago.
Terpak said that Slovak Telekom held first position in revenue terms in the country’s pay-TV market as of Q1 this year.
It was also in second place in terms of subscribers.
Its main competitor is Skylink, which offers TV channels for a service fee of €1.20 a month.
Indeed, competitors’ fees are generally 20-80% lower than Slovak Telekom’s making it both difficult and expensive for the company to grow.
