Hong Kong, September 27, 2005 — The Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (CASBAA) has launched an intensive enforcement campaign against Philippines pirate pay-TV pirate operators, starting with police raids on cable companies in Mindanao on September 21, and in Metro Manila on September 23 and 26.
“This is the first of a series of high-impact actions the industry is taking to highlight the seriousness of cable signal theft in the Philippines, especially for legitimate, law-abiding Filipino cable and satellite TV operators,” said CASBAA CEO, Simon Twiston Davies.
CASBAA is an industry-based advocacy group that promotes pay-TV services via cable, satellite, broadband and wireless video networks across the Asia-Pacific.
The recent CASBAA-instigated raids on renegade cable operators were undertaken in co-operation with the National Bureau of Investigation of the Philippines (NBI).
CASBAA said it had been conducting surveillance of the target companies for several months taking note of the re-transmission of pay-TV programming which had not been authorised by the channel providers or their legitimate distributors in the Philippines.
“In many cases unscrupulous operators steal the pay-TV signals and resell them for significant profit,” said Mr Twiston Davies. “Our data shows aggregated industry losses in the Philippines for 2004 of US$70 million and preliminary estimates for 2005 suggest that this figure has increased significantly.”
CASBAA data showed 880,000 legitimate and 650,000 illegitimate cable and satellite TV subscribers in the Philippines in 2004. For 2005 the problem would appear to have worsened with an increase in the number of illegal cable connections and a drop in the number of legitimate subscriptions.
“These are frightening numbers,” said Mr Twiston Davies, “because they are deteriorating year after year. And dont forget that these figures dont fully represent a big hole in government revenues in terms of forgone license fees and taxes. Last year that was already as high as US$38 million.”
For the recent raids, acting under search warrants, the NBI operatives raided and confiscated equipment in Cotabato City and Butuan that was being used for unauthorized pay-TV signal use and distribution. The raids on September 23 and 26 were in Pasig City, Taytay, Rizal and Alaminos, Laguna.
CASBAA noted that the target cable companies were stealing popular cable television channels such as CNN International, AXN, Cartoon Network, Discovery Channel, Disney Channel, ESPN, STAR Sports, STAR Movies, STAR World, HBO, MTV and National Geographic Channel.
Mr. Twiston Davies said this is not just about protecting the intellectual property rights of international broadcasters, but about the development of a thriving domestic industry currently undermined by unbridled signal theft.
“We hope that the Philippines authorities will take note of the seriousness of this problem,” he said. “Criminal charges and high-profile raids could be avoided by giving a clear mandate to the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to take appropriate administrative actions to oblige current illegal operators to ‘go legit’,” said Mr Twiston Davies.
CASBAA is working closely with players in the local industry who use legitimate programming and government agencies such as the NTC and the Department of Trade and Industry – Intellectual Property Office to curb signal theft.
In pursuit of the Associations agenda CASBAA recently staged a seminar in Bangkok with the Thai Department of Intellectual Property and supported a series of technical principles to protect content output from digital set-top boxes.
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CONTACT
Rebecca Kennedy
CASBAA
+852 2854 9913 or pr@casbaa.com
ABOUT CASBAA
The Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia is an industry association dedicated to the promotion of multi-channel television via cable, satellite, broadband and wireless video networks across the Asia-Pacific region. CASBAA represents some 110 Asia-based corporations, which in turn serve more than 3 billion people. Member organizations include ABC Asia Pacific, ABN AMRO, AsiaSat, ASTRO (Malaysia), Bloomberg Television, Discovery Networks Asia, EMC, HBO Asia, IBM, MTV Networks Asia Pacific, Nokia, NOW Broadband TV, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Sony Pictures Television International, STAR Group, Turner International Asia Pacific, UBC (Thailand), Walt Disney Television International, Zone Vision, Asian Food Channel, BBC World, China Entertainment Television, CNBC Asia, Dream ESPN STAR Sports, Harmonic, Indovision, Juniper Networks, Kabelvision, PanAmSat, SkyCable, TimeWarner, Anytime and TVBI.