CENTRAL CATV, a cable television firm doing business as SkyCable, will spend P600 million this year to roll out more digital boxes in Metro Manila and Cebu, according to chief operating officer Carlo Katigbak.

Digital boxes encrypt signals to prevent signal piracy. At end-2007, SkyCable has deployed 50,000 boxes to SkyCable subscribers in Metro Manila and 15,000 in Cebu.

“We… rolled out a total of 65,000 digital boxes last year. This year, we are targeting to deploy 40,000 more and we hope that half of our subscribers would have already bought these boxes by the end of this year,” Katigbak said.

SkyCable has around 500,000 subscribers and accounts for 65 percent of the market in Metro Manila, Katigbak said.

“This year, we will be happy to hit a growth rate of 10 percent in subscriber numbers. But realistically, we may only grow by a single digit. We still need to deploy more boxes,” he added.

In 2007, he said, subscriber growth reached 5 percent.

For the past two years, SkyCable has been deploying addressable digital boxes that eliminate signal piracy and prevent illegal cable TV connection. “Since then the ratio of illegal versus legal subscribers have improved considerably. For every one paying cable TV subscriber, we noticed the number of illegal subscribers is only three,” he said.

The country has 13 million potential cable TV subscribers but the industry has recorded so far only 1 million legitimate customers and monitored another million nonpaying households connected to the cables.

In 2007, cable TV penetration rate in the country stood at around 15 percent—far below compared to neighboring countries Taiwan and Korea with a penetration rate of 80 percent to 90 percent. An estimated 60 percent of US households are listed subscribers.

The Philippines’ largest cable TV firm said it would continue to improve its channel line-up this year following the decision to drop six channels and replace these with new programs this year.

Katigbak said, “There will be no price adjustment” this year. SkyCable raised its subscription fees early last year. SkyCable Gold service went up by 6.87 percent to P870 from P814 a month and SkyCable Silver rates increased by 6.91 percent to P636 from P680.

JGSH Philippines Ltd., a wholly-owned offshore unit of JG Summit Holdings Inc., has secured a $300-million syndicated term-loan facility it will use to pay maturing obligations.

SkyCable to spend P600M on digital encryption boxes

CENTRAL CATV, a cable television firm doing business as SkyCable, will spend P600 million this year to roll out more digital boxes in Metro Manila and Cebu, according to chief operating officer Carlo Katigbak.

SAN Miguel Properties Inc. (SMPI), the listed property arm of San Miguel Corp. (SMC), said its net profit in 2007 rose 44 percent to P371 million from P257 million a year earlier driven by higher-rental income and lower-operating expenses.

CLIENTS can now get the Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor in systems from Hewlett-Packard (HP), processor maker ADVANCED Micro Devices (AMD) said in a statement.

THE Philippine Stock Exchange index fell 30.94, or 1.1 percent, to 2,824.81 at the close, its fourth day of losses. The measure is 27-percent down from its 3,873.50 record close on October 8.

The merger of Equitable PCI Bank and Banco de Oro Universal Bank, shortened to BDO Unibank, has opened up more shares to foreign funds. Prior to the merger, foreign ownership of BDO common shares had reached the 40-percent legal limit, which dropped to 17.72 percent as of June 30, 2007, a month after the merger took effect.