Satellite DMB Turns 1, Struggling to Stay Afloat

TU Media‘s satellite mobile TV business is a year old, and not doing as well as the company had hoped…mainly because the traditional TV stations are reserving their programming for their own mobile TV business. Another problem was regulation issues, with bipartisan bickering holding up the necessary regulatory changes. As a result the company failed to achieve its planned 600K subscribers by the end of last year, falling short by over 200K…and now has about 540,000 subscribers.
“Presently, TU Media is going through a long tunnel to see the daylight. But its end is invisible. More exactly, nobody knows if the tunnel has an end,” said Kim Kyung-mo, an analyst at Mirae Asset. “This year is the crucial time for TU Media. Should the firm fail to prove that it can survive and thrive in the near future, it will run the risk of a meltdown.”
From the article the problem of not being able to rebroadcast the TV stations is huge, with TU Media regarding that as make-or-break content. This is a different attitude to the generally accepted one that programming needs to be mobile-specific to be successful. The TV stations aren’t even negotiating, although I’m not sure why. They now have their own mobile TV system (T-DMB) which is free, as opposed to TU Media’s 13,000 won charge.
Also, according to TelecomsKorea (behind a subscription wall), the “Telecommunications Technology Association, a state-led technical standard organization, announced that it would start developing a standard for traffic/travel information service and a middleware standard for two-way DMB service.”

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