In recognising the growing popularity of its competitor in the content segment, Telekom Malaysia (TM) has now announced a unique collaboration to allow its UniFi (Personal) and Streamyx subscribers to have a complimentary, hassle-free access to the iflix video on demand (VOD) service for 12 months. This complimentary service will arrive in mid-December for personal UniFi users, while Streamyx subscribers with either 4 or 8 Mbps connections will start getting them at a future date. Current iflix subscribers will also be able to convert the free offer from TM and add another 12 months to their existing subscription.
On set-top boxes (STB), TM plans to eventually have the iflix app running off the boxes themselves. However, it was not revealed if TM plans to automatically push the app to the STB or have the user download it from the Play Store (available on the current generation of boxes).
Though the free access is only valid for one year, it’s still RM 96 for virtually doing nothing. Users will still have to lift a finger, at the least, to get the service started (when it becomes available). Fortunately, the sign-up process has been simplified and is now seamless. To activate the service, would-be subscribers are required to head to iflix.com on their computers or launch their iflix app from mobile devices, and they need to do this while being connected to a home UniFi or Streamyx connection. Once activated, the service can then be accessed anywhere and on any networks using the devices that have been registered. Up to 5 devices can be tied to a single account and if necessary, unused devices can be manually removed from within the iflix account.
According to iflix Malaysia’s CEO, Azran Osman-Rani, the seamless way of signing up for the service is the first of its kind in the world and added that iflix would try to get it patented. In a nutshell, the technology captures the network user’s unique IP address to create an account, and then links the device’s ID to that account. This is also how the system is able to identify up to that maximum allowable number of devices (5) to a particular account.
For TM, the iflix partnership can seem like it will canabalise its own HyppTV offering but according to Jeremy Kung (Executive Vice President of New Media, TM), this would not be the case. He believes that there will be very little overlap of the services for HyppTV and iflix, since the former provides a linear TV experience and its VOD services are provided on a transactional basis (compared to the subscription model adopted by iflix). HyppTV can also offer newer movies; compared to iflix which does not normally offer any movies that have been less than a year off the cinemas. Jeremy went on to add that these two services will actually complement each other when they come into play.
Along with the apparent benefits that the partnership provides, both companies are also expecting to see another positive byproduct to this initiative: an improvement on the economics of internet connection. VOD consumers will now get their content from within Malaysia, thus reducing the usage of TM‘s international bandwidth; which are currently being used for consumption of content from other countries. In fact, Azran also mentioned (perhaps accidentally) that the content servers are being hosted by TM, which in theory would make the VOD service very efficient indeed.
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