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Technology Stocks : PCW - Pacific Century CyberWorks Limited -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ms.smartest.person who wrote (2117)	1/25/2002 3:07:12 AM
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Media & Marketing: Yes Television Pledges to Go Ahead With Pay-TV Service Without CLP January 24, 2002 By ALKMAN GRANITSAS Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL HONG KONG -- Yes Television PLC pledged to move forward with its plans to launch an interactive television service in Hong Kong next month, despite the withdrawal of its key joint-venture partner from the project. Local partner CLP Telecommunications Ltd., a unit of Hong Kong power company CLP Holdings Ltd., announced late Tuesday that it was pulling out of the project after concluding a strategic review of its operations. The company gave no specific reason for its decision other than to say that its investment in pay television didn't fit with CLP Telecom's overall strategy at the moment. Yes Television, based London, plans to launch a commercial trial of its television service on Feb. 22, followed by a full-scale commercial rollout six to 12 months after that. "I would like to make very clear that we are surprised and disappointed by the decision of CLP Telecom," said Thomas Kressner, chairman and chief executive of Yes Television, at a news conference Wednesday. "But make no mistake, it does not impact our decision to role out our commercial trial next month." February's commercial trial is expected to cost Yes Television between US$3.8 million and US$6.4 million. Over the next three years the company estimates it will spend a total of US$32 million to get its interactive TV service up and running. Some industry analysts say Yes Television's service is ambitious. The company plans to offer a package of interactive services it calls "Total Television" -- bundling together a handful of regularly broadcast channels with video-on-demand service, Internet access and e-mail. Apart from 10,000 subscribers in the U.K., the service has never been commercially tested. Hong Kong would be the first market where it would be offered on a wide scale. Yes plans on delivering the service over the broadband telephone lines of telephone operator Pacific Century CyberWorks Ltd. "It's all very conceptual -- very, very conceptual," said Vivek Couto, an analyst at Media Partners Asia Ltd., a Hong Kong-based media research company. "It's going to be a very difficult model to work out." In the past year, the Hong Kong government's efforts to introduce competition into its pay-television market have suffered a number of setbacks. Initially, the government awarded five new pay-television licenses in 2000 after the monopoly of incumbent cable operator i-cable Communications Ltd. expired. Since then, two of the licensees, Star TV and Hong Kong Network TV, have scrapped plans to launch rival pay-TV services, and there have been several delays among the remaining license holders. Write to Alkman Granitsas at alkman.granitsas@feer.com1. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- URL for this Article: interactive.wsj.com Hyperlinks in this Article: (1) mailto:alkman.granitsas@feer.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright © 2002 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Printing, distribution, and use of this material is governed by your Subscription Agreement and copyright laws. For information about subscribing, go to wsj.com Used with permission of wsj.com