By Cho Jin-seo
Staff Reporter
TU Media celebrates the second anniversary of its satellite DMB (digital multimedia broadcasting) service today in a gloomy mood, struggling to stay afloat with some 200 billion won in accumulated losses.
A year earlier, on the first anniversary, the company said that it will achieve 1.2 million subscribers in 2006 and increase the number to 2.2 million in 2007. But the scheme now looks too ambitious to be realized, as the actual figure is hovering at around 1.1 million.
According to the company, the accumulated number of subscribers was 1.13 million as of last week, only 130,000 more than four months ago. What is worse is that the number has stayed almost stagnant throughout April, as there was almost the same amount of outflow of subscribers as the influx.
The result is in stark contrast with terrestrial DMB service. Both services had been hailed as groundbreaking mobile TV technologies when they were first launched, but it is the free-of-charge terrestrial DMB that has won the hearts of Korean consumers. About 4 million terrestrial DMB viewers were secured by last week, according to the Korea Radio Promotion Agency. On the contrary, satellite DMB charges 11,000 won per month plus a registration fee of 20,000 won.
TU complains that the government is discriminating against it. The company pays dozens of billions of won every year to use radio frequencies, but its rivals in the terrestrial DMB service are exempt from the obligation as the government has labeled it a public service.
``We understand that the government is trying to help the terrestrial DMB operators as they are providing it free,'' a company official said. ``But it's a problem that the Ministry of Information and Communication is not paying attention to us anymore. It was they who boasted that satellite DMB was the `world's first' when we first launched it in 2005.''
Another chronic pain for TU is terrestrial broadcasters refusal to allow TU Media to rerun their programs.
Subsequently, TU Media, an SK Telecom affiliate, has suffered a lack of audiovisual content to fill its dozens of channels, causing a worse-than-expected performance.
One of a few advantages it had over the terrestrial DMB was that it is a nationwide service, while the other covers only the metropolitan area around Seoul. However, the situation will get worse for TU when terrestrial DMB starts to go nationwide this summer, with KBS expanding its DMB network to the whole country in June and MBC following it in August.
TU is counting on the ``TU Ride On'' service for cars, which is capable of viewing both terrestrial and satellite DMB broadcasting.