Dialog Sat TV to target 250,000 customers by December

The recently launched Dialog TV is planning to secure 250,000 customers by December with a competitive entry point price strategy in a 400,000-television set market. Nushad Perera, General Manager Sales and Marketing, Dialog Telekom, told The Sunday Times FT that the company will introduce new pricing strategies to the market during this year to attract more customers. “Presently, the equipment and the installation is priced at Rs.17,500 but we are planning to introduce new pricing strategies,” he said.

Sri Lanka has 400,000 television sets and only 50,000 customers have Direct to home (DTH) or cable TV. “Out of this market we want to have 250,000 customers,” he said, adding that the company will have a massive awareness campaign to get the local consumers used to ‘Pay TV’. He stressed that the 29 channels that Dialog TV transmits are ‘all morally and ethically clean’. “By the end of the year, we will have 50 channels,” he added.

Dialog Telekom, the island's largest mobile phone operator, acquired satellite pay television operator Communiqu Broadband Networks (Pvt) Ltd and CBN Sat (Pvt) Ltd for 532.8 million rupees last year, through their subsidiary, Asset Media. Company officials said that the acquisition was funded through internally generated cash and that Dialog Telekom will show a slight dent in its financials this year due to this investment. “In about one year, we will make a positive impact,” an official said.

Dialog also bought Asset Media for Rs.325 million last October in a bid to use the latter’s radio and television frequency licences.
Perera commenting about the company’s third generation mobile services or 3G launch last August said that Dialog is only concentrating on facilitating voice and video communication. Shooting down the argument that 3G is not a viable option, as the technology was too costly, he said that it depends on how 3G is marketed.

“We are giving customers the facility for high speed web browsing, video streaming, online games, music and movie downloads, but not video conferencing and video calling,” he explained. He said that the strategy Dialog will be following will be pricing and content. “We predict that the handsets will reduce and the service will be economical,” he added. Dialog Telekom, leads the industry with over 3 million subscribers, followed by Mobitel, Tigo (formerly Celltel) and Hutchinson.