SkyCable has no plans to hike subscription rates

Lopez-owned SkyCable said yesterday they have no plans of increasing subscription rates in addition to the five-percent hike thas was implemented last February.

SkyCable vice-president for programming Juno Henares Chuidian said that contrary to news reports (not in The STAR), the country’s largest cable television operator will not raise rates by 20 to 50 percent.

The cable operator implemented a five-percent increase in subscription fees in February this year to account for the new cable TV channel, Animax.

"A large percentage of service costs are still in programming and any future rate increases will be largely because of programming and currency depreciation," Chuidian pointed out. Fees charged by program providers have increased substantially, tracking the depreciation of the peso against the dollar.

Meanwhile, SkyCable’s anti-fraud team hopes to reduce the number of illegal subscribers, estimated at a ratio of 1:1 or one illegal subscriber for every legal subscriber, in the next 15 months. Illegal subscribers damage the cable network leading to unclear reception and frequent outages.

This is expected to be accomplished through the installation of addressable set-up boxes, which according to SkyCable president Eugenio Lopez III, will completely eliminate signal piracy. The boxes are expected to be in place before the end of the year. Aside from eliminating illegal subscription, the boxes will also allow subscribers flexibility in choosing the channels they want to receive.

Creditors of Sky Vision Corp. and Central CATV Inc. for Sky Cable and Philippine Home Cable Holdings Inc. for PLDT-owned Home Cable agreed earlier to restructure the P2.5-billion debt of the cable operators. The debt restructuring agreement would allow them to pay for the debt over the next seven years.

The restructured debt amounted to P1.66 billion for Sky Cable and P1.35 billion for Home Cable. Chuidian said the successful debt restructuring paved the way for the continuous improvement of the firm’s services.

The creditors which signed the agreement were Asia United Bank, Asia United Bank-Trust, Chinatrust (Phils.) Commercial Bank Corp., Development Bank of the Philippines, Bank of the Philippine Islands, East West Banking Corp., International Commercial Bank of China, Keppel Bank Philippines Inc., Metropolitan Bank and Trust Co., Bangkok Bank, China Banking Corp., Equitable PCI Bank, Amalgamated Investment Bancorporation and PCI Capital Corp. The cable operators started restructuring talks with creditors in 2001.

SkyCable and Home Cable earlier merged operations under the holding company Beyond Cable, which is owned 66.67 percent by the Lopezes and the rest, by the PLDT group. The two cable TV operators, which account for more than 70 percent of the market, are now consolidating up to the equity level, which will also involve Sky Cable acquiring Home Cable’s assets in exchange for the latter receiving shares in Sky.

The restructuring agreement was also accomplished after another Lopez-owned company ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corp. infused $30 million into Beyond Cable. The amount is convertible into equity.