Astro: Full HD STB conversion by year-end
June 17, 2013
By Colin Mann
Astro, Malaysia’s largest pay-TV operator, aims to complete the conversion of its customers’ legacy set-top boxes to the B.yond HD platform by the year-end, said chief executive officer Datuk Rohana Rozhan.
“We saw over 64 per cent of customers during the first quarter subscribing to HD and other value-added services, which in turn drove up our average revenue per user,” she revealed at Invest Malaysia 2013.
She suggested to reporters that this meant Astro’s strategy was working. “We swapped out 168,000 devices in the first three months of 2013, but are also prioritising customers who would most likely go for premium services.” According to Rohana, Astro is set to increase its bandwidth capacity in 2014, allowing the operator to increase the number of HD channels on offer. Switching customers onto its B.yond services increases Astro’s ability to charge premium rates and improves its ARPU.