TPG surges, plots IPTV future
Riding high on rush to bundles
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TPG, fast becoming the standard-bearer of Australia’s “tier two” ISPs, has announced a 17 percent lift in EBITDA to $AU131.9 million and is preparing to follow iiNet into the IPTV set-top-box market.
The company also announced a reorganization under which the TPG brand will focus on consumer and SME products, while the PIPE Network business it acquired in 2010 will fly the flag in the enterprise, government and wholesale markets.
While the company only added 19,000 broadband subscribers in the year – off-net losses offsetting growth in on-net subscriptions of 26,000 – it more than tripled the number of customers taking bundled services, from 49,000 to 156,000.
The company announced at its March 20 investor briefing that it will soon abandon its limited browser-based IPTV offerings. Instead, the company hopes to emulate iiNet’s successful BoB offerings by launching a TPG-branded IPTV set-top-box.
As well as a mainstream content pack including movies, TPG will be offering channel packs for Chinese-, Indian- and Arabic-speaking communities. Other mooted services include cloud-based video surveillance and business VoIP services.
On the corporate side, TPG said Vodafone’s network expansion has driven expansion of its PIPE fibre network, which grew by more than 400 Km and has been expanded to regional areas including the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast in Queensland, the Blue Mountains in NSW, and Gippsland in Victoria. ®
