Romtelecom to enhance OTT offering

Romtelecom plans to make changes to its over-the-top offering with additional pay TV services and a premium movie offering later this year, according to Peter Terpak, director for product marketing and TV business at the Romanian telco.

Speaking to DTVE ahead of Informa’s Digital TV CEE conference in Prague next week, Terpak said Romtelecom plans to enhance and upgrade the offering towards the end of the year. It is currently offering a package of linear channels for free and a premium package on top, currently sold at the €12 for the first six months. Existing Romtelecom subscribers can benefit from bundling with other services and a 50% discount. Terpak said the service would benefit from the addition of linear pay TV channels, and said that Romtelecom also planned to boost the offering with additional movies.

Terpak says the main use case for the OTT service is “on the go”, enabling existing customer to view content on multiple devices. The service is squarely targeted at existing pay TV subscribers and Terpak believes there is relatively little room for organic growth in the market as the vast majority of Romanians already subscribe to a service.

Separately, Romtelecom is involved in a dispute with public broadcaster TVR that has led to the latter pulling coverage of Euro 2012 football from Romtelecom’s service. The dispute involves an invoice for €550,000 relating to advance payment for coverage of the Olympic Games in London that Romtelecom says was wrongly calculated. The telco said TVR’s withdrawal of its Euro 2012 coverage was unacceptable and that it reserved the right to use all legal means to protect its interests.

This article has been amended. It originally said that Romtelecom planned to “relaunch” its OTT service before Christimas this year and to acquire premium movie rights. Romtelecom said that it planned to enhance and upgrade the service rather than relaunch it. Romtelecom also said that it has plans to bring some new movies to the service, but has no current plans to add premium movies.