Dialog TV in six months

Dialog Telekom Ltd, the leader in mobile telephony, will go live with a pay TV channel in six months time, after which it would provide options for mobile television, company officials said.

This comes on the back of Dialog last week acquiring a 90 percent stake in Asset Media Private Ltd which is licensed to operate television broadcasting and pay television services in the country.

“Dialog will not go down the path of conventional television channels, but will promote pay television channels such as AXN, ESPN, Cinemax, Star World,etc and later get into mobile television as well,” a company official told The Sunday Times FT, adding that they have not yet zeroed in on a name.

The Sunday Times FT reported this eventual expansion in the company in its July 14 edition last year when Dialog parent, Telekom Malaysia Chairman Tan Sri Radzi Bin Mansor said in an interview that they may look at delivering media channels on their soon to be launched 3G or third generation technology. “Pay television is very new in Sri Lanka and we will have a good positioning,” the Dialog official said. He said the licence was worth Rs. 325 million and this latest acquisition will be popular for the group’s strategy of achieving a quadruple play of mobile, fixed, broadband and television media product proposition for local consumers.

“We will develop our own content as well as tie up with other cable TV channels,” he said, adding that pay TV will initially be positioned for the higher end of the market.