The new features include a new TV home screen offering a more user-friendly layout which is predominantly image-driven, the service provider says, providing immediate access to one’s favourite TV content from one screen. This development is being undertaken by GO in a bid to deliver an enhanced customer experience and to give customers more content at their fingertips, the press statement sent to BM says.

“For the past year, our engineers have worked round the clock to deliver a whole new TV experience for our customers. Our focus has remained that of connecting people to the content they love, and what better way of doing this than investing in our systems to deliver a platform that can support increased interactivity, push content based on users’ preferences, and which can also deliver TV content over mobile devices at the click of a button,” said Nikhil Patil, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at GO. 

“What is even better is that we have replicated this experience on our TV Anywhere APP that allows our customers to enjoy their most favourite TV content outside the comfort of their home, without consuming data from their bundle,” Mr Patil added. 

Phasing out DTTV

Furthermore, Chris Attard, Senior Manager of TV Systems at GO, explained that GO has been simultaneously managing two TV networks for a number of years. Its digital terrestrial network, more commonly known as digital terrestrial television (DTTV), will be slowly phased out over the coming year, but through further investment, its internet protocol television (IPTV) network, branded GO interactive TV, will continue to deliver rich content to esteemed customers by means of this latest upgrade. 

“TV technology is a fast-changing game and we felt that now is the right time to reinvent ourselves, invest and reconfirm GO as the TV leader in Malta,” said Mr Attard. 

The main features offered by GO’s IPTV platform remain centred on interactivity such as program restart, pause-live capabilities, and a network digital video recorder (DVR) which means that customers can record multiple channels at the same time, amongst a host of other enriched features.

“The system is intelligent enough to capture and recognise what the users are watching and will eventually start providing them with recommendations on what content they are likely to love the most. Furthermore, the user also has the ability to create multiple profiles directly to get TV recommendations that reflect the users’ TV preferences,” Mr Attard added.

“We have been listening to our customers to understand what they want and how best they want our product delivered. Of course, this would never have been possible without GO’s heavy investment in true fibre technology which enables ultra-speeds and reliability, as well as 4G network which adds the portability aspect,” Mr Patil said.

“Now with the network enablers in place, we can push the next generation applications to our customers, starting from a rich TV experience in terms of choice of content, modern environment and content quality. Indeed, I can safely say that when it comes to features and functionality, GO has the edge and remains unrivalled in its service offering,” Mr Patil added.

This upgrade will be undertaken over the course of a number of weeks, therefore GO warns that customers will be upgraded in different phases in order to ensure a smooth change. GO promised to notify customers in advance.

The post GO launches television services upgrade first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

The total number of mobile subscriptions have been on a gradual rise in the past four years, MCA figures reveal. At the end of 2014, the figure reached 546,229 and rose to 557,583 in 2015 and 585,470 in 2016.

While the number of prepaid schemes for mobile connectivity appeared to steadily fluctuate between approximately 380,000 and 401,000 in the past four years, post-paid plans were on a gradual rise from 166,150 at the end of 2014 to 224,346 at the end of 2018.

Although mobile subscriptions outpaced fixed telephone services, still the figure for landline was on a steady rise. At the end of 2014 fixed telephone subscription were 230,361 and climbed up to 255,437 by the end of 2018.

Television subscriptions on total — including analogue, digital and IPTV services — also grew gradually from 147,880 at the end of 2014 to 165,289 at the end of 2018.

However, in another report earlier the MCA said that both fixed telephone and television subscriptions recently had been on the rise due to bundle packages, when landline internet connectivity comes with a fixed phone line and television package.

Average revenue per user (ARPU) boosted from €56.21 from the end of 2017 to €59.09 by the end of 2018 for fixed broadband. For mobile phones, ARPU jumped from €43.24 to €45.44 in the same period. Despite a visible downfall around the middle of 2018, ARPU for television went from €44.27 from the end of 2017 to €45.23 at the end of 2018. Fixed telephone line ARPU, however, was on a decline for the past four years, dropping from €33.41 at the end of 2017 to €32.60 at the end of 2018.

The MCA published the figures in its updated series of Data Report Sheet (DRS) publications with a report. The purpose of MCA’s publication is to inform the general public about the main trends and development in Malta related to electronic communications and postal services.

Further figures and visual representation of data is published in the MCA’s slideshow, available for public view at the authority’s website.

The post Mobile subscriptions in Malta rise steadily by end-2018 first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.