Why M1's MiBox may fail to stir up the pay TV market

Its 10,000 subscribers are insignificant.

M1’s MiBox is close to the 10k subscriber threshold for the telco to be eligible to cross-carry exclusive content such as the Barclays Premier League (BPL) and World Cup matches. M1’s CEO Karen Kool had earlier said that it could be eligible for cross-carriage of content by mid-2014. But M1 would still need to apply for a nationwide Internet Protocol (IP) TV licence before it can be a qualified provider of cross-carriage content.

OCBC noted that although MiBox is available to both M1 fibre subscribers and non-M1 fibre subscribers at S$8.56 and S$12.84 respectively, it does not expect it to have a meaningful impact on the Pay TV market in the near term.

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For one, its market share (10k) is hardly significant compared to StarHub’s 533k and SingTel’s 418k subscribers (as of end 2013). 

Secondly, any revenue from cross carriage will flow back to the exclusive content owner. In the case of both BPL and the 2014 World Cup, that would be SingTel. Last but not least, the main hurdle may be the steep pricing of the sports content itself, which may put it out of reach for the “casual” sports viewer.

StarHub also looking for IPTV
Separately, Straits Times report Thursday said StarHub is planning to officially launch a new Pay TV service for consumers that runs on the fibre network (NBN) instead of its traditional cable platform.

StarHub has not announced the official launch date for TV on Fibre for consumers, although the service was launched for businesses in Mar 2013. We think that migrating customers over to the fibre makes sense as it would not need to invest further in its ageing cable network.