Viasat Announces Estonian Deal

STOCKHOLM: Modern Times Group’s Viasat Broadcasting is to begin marketing and selling its pay-TV channel packages to subscribers of the Estonian broadband and IPTV services provider Elion.

Of Elion’s 175,000 broadband customers, 88,000  subscribe to its IPTV offering. Viasat’s Estonian free-TV channels (TV3, TV6 and 3+) will be immediately available to Elion subscribers through the platform’s existing IPTV packages, and the company will offer its pay-TV packages to the customer base, priced at between EEK 99 per month and EEK 305 per month. Viasat’s premium offering on Elion’s IPTV network will comprise the Viasat Gold package of 12 Viasat channels and 25 third party channels. This folows a similar tie-up with Telia in Sweden in May 2008, and builds on previous IPTV agreements with ten broadband network operators in Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

Elion is the only IPTV service in Estonia and has a 54-percent share of the broadband market. It is owned by AS Estii Telekom, which is the largest telecommunications provider in Estonia.

“This agreement with Elion is the latest step in the rollout of our ‘anytime, anywhere’ strategy, whereby we seek to make our free-TV channels as broadly available as possible, and to attract subscribers to our pay-TV content on multiple distribution platforms," said Hans-Holger Albrecht, the president and CEO of MTG. "Elion is the number one Estonian broadband and IPTV operator and this deal highlights the demand for our portfolio of high-rating free-TV channels and popular premium pay-TV content. IPTV distribution is complementary to our own DTH satellite platform because it targets new homes that we have not been able to reach before. We are therefore addressing new homes and will benefit from higher penetration levels moving forward.”