Celcom gets Aussie partner

by **hlk** Fri 09 Dec 2011, 08:05

TM needs technical partner to bid for RM2bil broadcasting project

PETALING JAYA: Broadcast Australia will ink a deal on Monday to be Celcom Axiata Bhd's technical partner ahead of a bid for the much awaited RM2bil digital terrestrial television broadcasting (DTTB) project.

This comes as a surprise to many in the industry as Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM) was known to have been in talks with Broadcast Australia for a long time for a similar tie-up.

The agreement between Celcom and Broadcast Australia, which operates an infrastructure network for broadcasters and telecommunications providers in Australia, is exclusive. However, a source said TM could still come in to be part of the arrangement but this had to be done via Celcom.

Although various industry players are lining up technical players to be ready to vie for the DTTB project, the request for proposal (RFP) for the project is long overdue, given that the deadline to migrate from analogue to digital is 2015.

On Nov 3, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission put up a notification on its website to invite public comments on the draft technical standards and technical specifications documents in relation to the DTTB project.

TM, Celcom and Broadcast Asia are not the only parties eyeing the job. Others had expressed interest to the regulator in August, but a key requirement is that they must have experienced technical partners because digitisation is new to Malaysia, although Astro has gone digital.

Those that are keen include Maxis Bhd, whose technical partner is Astro; KUB Malaysia Bhd in partnership with Germany's Media Broadcast Systems; and YTL Communications Sdn Bhd, with US-based Sezmi and American technical consultant Peter Douglas.

Last month, Puncak Semangat Sdn Bhd, a company controlled by Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary, signed a pact with New Zealand's Kordia. Kordia also has an arrangement with Puncak Semangat to transfer skills and knowledge to Universiti Kuala Lumpur.

Other parties keen on the project are said to be Comintel Sdn Bhd, I-Media Broadcasting Solutions Sdn Bhd, Ikatan Maya Sdn Bhd, and Apex Communications Sdn Bhd, but it could not ascertained who their technical partners are.

As for TM, sources did not rule out the possibility of the telecommunications company partnering KUB and Media Broadcast Systems. TM has rights to the nearly 100 hill site stations, where the current transmission infrastructure is located, but it is unclear if that gives the company an advantage in the DTTB bid.

The idea of DTTB was first mooted in 2005, and a public inquiry was conducted the following year. The shift involves the conversion of analogue technology to DTTB for all terrestrial television stations. Under the current set-up, TV broadcasters are individually licensed as content application service providers, whereby they install their own equipment at transmission sites.

By going digital, the players will need to migrate to a different band and there are needs for new infrastructure. The spectrum bands earmarked for digital broadcasting were 174-230MHz and 470-742MHz, MCMC said.

The migration is for the country's free-to-air TV services such as RTM 1 and 2, TV3, NTV7, 8TV and Channel 9 that are still using the analogue technology. The migration will also free up the controversial 700MHz band that telcos are hoping to get a slice of.