MTG’s Viasat, Swedish Telco in New IPTV Deal

STOCKHOLM, May 23: Modern
Times Group’s (MTG) Viasat has reached a five-year agreement with Telia, a
leading Swedish telecommunications operator, to market and sell its pay-TV
channel packages to Telia’s 300,000-plus IPTV customers and broadband
subscribers, starting June 1.

Under the agreement, Viasat’s
free-TV channels—TV3, TV6, TV8 and ZTV—which together account for a
third of the commercial-television viewing in Sweden, will also be included in
Telia’s “Lagom” and “Stor” packages. Telia’s digital TV customers will now be
able to access a total of 17 Viasat free-TV and pay-TV channels in six
different Viasat channel packages: Viasat Silver, Viasat Gold, Viasat Sport,
Viasat Film, Viasat Sport Film and
Viasat Golf. The Viasat Gold and Silver packages include the Viasat Sport 1, 2
and 3 channels, the five TV1000 thematic movie channels, Viasat Explorer, Viasat
History, Viasat Crime and Viasat Nature. The packages also include well-known
third-party channels, including the Disney channels, CNN, MTV and National
Geographic Channel, which are already included in Viasat’s existing satellite
DTH and IPTV offerings. Subscribers will also have access to a catch-up TV
service with more than 100 hours of on-demand programming from TV3, TV6, TV8
and ZTV, as well as programming from TV1000.

Viasat will market the
packages directly to Telia’s customers at prices ranging from SEK 79
(approximately $13) per month for Viasat Sport to SEK 299 (approximately $51)
per month for the Viasat Gold premium package of 16 Viasat channels and 29
third-party channels.

Telia has more than 1
million broadband customers and more than 300,000 IPTV customers, which
represents approximately 90 percent of the total Swedish IPTV subscriber
market.

Hans-Holger
Albrecht, the president and CEO of MTG, commented: “This agreement is a
significant milestone for us. Our core business is the aggregation and selling
of packaged TV channel content, and this deal provides us with direct access to
a new and large potential subscriber base. It reinforces our strategic focus on
making our channels and packages as broadly available as possible on as many
platforms as possible. It also
emphasizes our customer commitment to enable TV viewers to watch what they
want, when they want and where they want. The deal highlights our position as
an independent pay-TV player, operating across multiple distribution channels,
and the premium content provider of choice.”

He continued: “Telia has
built a scale and successful pay-TV business in the IPTV environment and we are
delighted to be able to access and sell our services to this large and growing
customer base, which is typically not addressed by our DTH satellite service.
We look forward to working with Telia to develop our joint content offering and
to capitalize on the opportunities presented by the rapidly evolving digital
environment.”

—By Irene Lew