SkyCable to spend P600M for digital conversion

Lopez-controlled Sky Cable Corp. is spending around P600 million this year to convert more coverage areas from analog to digital, install additional digital set-top boxes, and offer new cable television services.

The amount will be sourced from internally generated funds, company officials revealed.

The STAR learned that Sky Cable Corp., which now includes Home Cable after the latter’s assets were acquired by the Lopez group from the PLDT group, now has close to 500,000 subscribers nationwide, of which roughly 200,000 are in Metro Manila.

Of the three million households in Metro Manila, Sky Cable can cover only 1.2 million, only 30 percent or around 400,000 subscribers of which are in the A, B and C economic strata – the target market for post-paid cable TV services.

Last year, Sky Cable launched its prepaid cable TV service, whose subscriber base has reached only 10,000 so far. The relatively low rollout of the prepaid service was attributed by company officials to the fact that an area first has to be made digital-ready, a move that involves considerable investments for Sky Cable.

Another reason for the still low prepaid subscriber base is that a prepaid node must consist of 500 to 1,000 households in a contiguous location.

As part of Sky Cable’s move to reduce, if not totally eliminate, illegal cable TV connections, the company has been installing analog and digital set-top boxes. One box is attached to one television.