Bhutan NetCom, the country’s first Multi-Service Operator (MSO), was formally established in the capital yesterday. With this, the local cable operators will no longer have to buy contents directly from foreign broadcasters. The MSO will provide the contents to them.
Bringing cable service under the umbrella of an MSO is expected to help deliver premium contents and equal distribution of TV channels to an increasingly discerning customer irrespective of places. It will also contribute to digitalizing the television signal in the country.
According to Bhutan NetCom, the current trend of local cable operators negotiating directly with foreign content providers or using Direct to Home service leads to unequal distribution of channels, an outflow of money from individual cable operators and poor quality.
“So the MSO will now buy the content from all these broadcasters on behalf of all the local cable operators. They don’t have to negotiate with these broadcasters on their own now because that would become very expensive to buy the contents from the broadcasters. MSO buying the contents from the foreign broadcaster will be much helpful to our local cable operators,” said Khampa, the CEO of Bhutan NetCom.
“As cable operators providing services in rural areas, we are not able to give the same number of channels as in Thimphu. It would be expensive for us. Now, with the MSO coming in, there will be equal distribution of channels across the country. That way, it benefits both the service provider and subscriber,” added Singay Dorji, a Cable TV Service Provider at Samtse.
The consortium of Local Cable Operators, who are also the members of the Association of Bhutanese Cable Operators, formed the Multi-Service Operator.
Currently, there are 92 licensed cable TV operators in the country.
Samten Dolkar
