PCCW in IPTV Partnership with News Corp.'s STAR

Hong Kong-based IPTV provider, PCCW (note: the company claims to have over 550,000 subscribers to its "now TV" service, which launched in August, 2003; that figure represents approximately 25% penetration of Hong Kong households, and means that now TV is the world's largest IPTV service), has formed a partnership with News Corp.-owned pay-TV provider, STAR, to explore IPTV opportunities in Asian markets. The companies say that their partnership will combine PCCW's expertise in building and operating an IPTV business with STAR's experience in content creation and distribution and in the pay TV business: they plan to target both platform operators and media companies. According to PCCW, its cooperation with STAR will "involve full pay-TV operations and will be in addition to worldwide technical and IT solutions provided by CASCADE," a wholly owned subsidiary of PCCW, which has built and installed end-to-end IPTV platforms in Thailand, Morocco and other countries. PCCW and STAR say that they are currently in discussions with a number of operators.

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