Shin Broadband Internet (Thailand), a subsidiary of Shin Satellite (ShinSat), has begun marketing domestic satellite dishes that are designed to receive signals from free-to-air television channels, replacing conventional antennae, and hopes the venture will become a new revenue stream.

The DTV-brand dish, plus its "set-up box", costs Bt1,925 a set.

Shin Broadband general manager Tanadit Charoenchan said the company expected to sell 1 million DTV sets next year, making the business its main source of revenues.

The company's main revenues currently come from developing satellite applications for ShinSat's iPSTAR broadband satellite. It records about Bt70 million in operating revenues per year.

Tanadit said the DTV dishes had the strength to provide a better television signal to domestic screens than did conventional antennae and that this would encourage many home television viewers, especially in remote areas, to buy them. In a soft launch three months ago, the company sold 30,000 DTV sets.

Tanadit said the market in Thailand was huge, given that about 10 million households in the Kingdom used conventional television antennae.

"We'll spend about Bt2 million to Bt3 million over the next three months on a nationwide marketing campaign," he said.

As well, Shin Broadband plans to introduce a DTV set-up box with a 60-gigabyte storage capacity, sufficient to record about 50 hours of television programming for viewers. The price will be about Bt4,000.

Meanwhile, ShinSat chief commercial officer Yongsit Rojsrivichaikul said the satellite operator had signed a deal with a telecom operator in South Korea to provide a communications backup system via the iPSTAR satellite. It is building up its iPSTAR gateway in South Korea to support the service and expects to make about Bt100 million from it next year.

The iPSTAR broadband satellite's footprint covers 14 countries in the Asia-Pacific.

Last month, ShinSat announced it had received the Indian government's permission to set up iPSTAR broadband-satellite gateways in New Delhi and Bombay, in order to provide broadband services to India's vast market.

It has already set up iPSTAR gateways in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou and is currently establishing service outlets and sales and distribution channels in China.

Sirivish Toomgum

The Nation