PCCW to Offer Pay-Television Service on PlayStation 3

[khurramdar]

PCCW to Offer Pay-Television Service on PlayStation 3

By Mark Lee

PCCW Ltd., Hong Kong’s biggest phone company, said it plans to distribute its pay-television service via Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 3 video game consoles, as competition with rival I-Cable Communications Ltd. intensifies.

PCCW may start offering its Now TV service to users of PS3 consoles in the first quarter, the carrier said in a faxed statement today. The service will be enabled by an application that can be downloaded from PlayStation’s Web site, it said.

The Hong Kong carrier, controlled by billionaire Richard Li, aims to bolster pay-TV revenue after losing the rights to broadcast English Premier League soccer matches to I-Cable from next year. Sony is diversifying its PlayStation video-game division into other entertainment services to lure users against competition from rival game consoles including Nintendo Co.’s Wii and Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360.

Pay-TV revenue at PCCW may decline 11 percent in 2011 because of the loss of the English Premier League rights, Macquarie Group Ltd. analyst Lisa Soh wrote in a Nov. 26 report. I-Cable shares rose 21 percent in Hong Kong trading on Nov. 17, after the pay-TV operator said it won exclusive rights for the soccer series for three seasons starting 2010.

The agreement with PCCW comes after Sony partnered with South Korea’s KT Group to offer the MegaTV video-on-demand service on PS3 from November 2007, according to the Tokyo-based company’s Web site.

PCCW has 992,000 subscribers for its Now TV service, which is mainly distributed through set-top boxes connected to the company’s broadband Internet network, it said today. I-Cable had 947,000 pay-TV users at the end of June, it reported in August.