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To: VidiVici who wrote (42449)	6/27/1999 6:36:00 PM
From: Maya	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 50808

dailynews.yahoo.com Singapore Trio Tune In To Sino Cyberspace Via TV By Matt Pottinger BEIJING (Reuters) - A trio of young entrepreneurs from Singapore say the best way to bring Chinese people online is through their television sets. And they plan to spend $100 million to prove it. The three masters of MyWeb Inc.com began marketing the firm's TV set-top boxes and Internet service in Beijing this week. MyWeb's locally made boxes, which sport a slimmed-down operating system and a phone jack, sell for 1,488 yuan ($180) -- a fraction of the price of a personal computer. ''Markets where there is low PC penetration and low purchasing power are ideal for MyWeb,'' T.S. Wong, the company's 28-year-old president and CEO, said before a launch ceremony in Beijing Thursday. Several Chinese firms already sell Internet set-top boxes, and Microsoft Corp (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) is scheduled to market its own system called Venus later this year in China. Wong said MyWeb seeks to out-pace the competition by offering an expansive Chinese-language portal that features advertising, financial services and electronic commerce. Set-top box owners would automatically be routed to MyWeb's homepage (www.myweb.com.cn), much the way subscribers to America Online are directed to the company's content. The company would earn money from online advertising, e-commerce, partnerships with Internet service providers and royalties from boxes sold, Wong said. Wong -- who co-founded the firm in 1996 with fellow engineers at the National University of Singapore, Danny Toe and Jason Chan -- said the model was pioneered in Malaysia and Singapore. The company has sold 20,000 boxes to those markets and attracts one million visits each month to its English-language Web site (www.mywebn.com.my), earning revenues of $1.4 million and profits of $350,000 in 1998, he said. The company listed on NASDAQ's over-the-counter bulletin board in February through a merger with a U.S.-based firm, and has amassed a market capitalization of $100 million and a world-wide staff of 100. The Internet is still in its infancy in China, with official estimates of fewer than 3 million Internet users, online advertising of only $3 million in 1998, few credit cards and prohibitive telecommunications fees. But Wong pledged a $100 million investment in China by the end of 2000, much of it to promote the firm's brand on TV and in newspapers. He projected Chinese sales of 200,000 set-top boxes this year, one million next year and 1999 revenues of $5-$8 million. As China's credit infrastructure slowly matured, he said, e-commerce would account for the lion's share of revenues. ''We realize that there's very low credit card penetration here,'' he said. ''We want to first build the confidence of buying online.''

To: VidiVici who wrote (42449)	6/28/1999 9:10:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 50808

Canal Plus is making a terrestrial move...................... multi-international.com Canal Plus Eyes Nordic Expansion By JOHN PAGNI June 21, 1999 Helsinki, Finland -- The Nordic arm of Canal Plus S.A., Europe's top pay TV company, is aiming to expand its programming lineup in the region, and it hopes to snag a digital-terrestrial-television license in Finland. The company will launch a new pan-Nordic channel this September, Canal Plus Blue, which will feature sports and movies. Canal Plus Blue will be added to the company's current Nordic lineup: Canal Plus, which transmits separate feeds for Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden; and Canal Plus Yellow, a pan-Nordic network. At the same time, Canal Plus hopes to be a winner in Finland's ongoing DTT-license auction. The auction should be completed in time for new channels to launch ahead of next year's Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia. Canal Plus Finland applied for only one DTT channel, and it is confident that it will win a license, said Juha Silvennoinen, CEO of Canal Digital, Canal Plus' Nordic unit. Silvennoinen added that the DTT programming could include U.S. and local films, and he's currently in talks with Finnish television and film companies to secure programming rights. Finland has about 920,000 cable households, 400,000 satellite-master-antenna-television (SMATV) homes and 300,000 direct-to-home satellite households. Silvennoinen estimated that DTT could grab an additional 700,000 households. Canal Digital is also eyeing the development of additional programming services that it could use on a pan-Nordic scale, including home shopping and home banking services.