MásMóvil and Huawei move forwards with TV plan

Spanish alternative telco MásMóvil will unveil the TV service it is preparing with Huawei in the next few weeks, according to a report by Spanish financial daily El Español.

According to El Español, the MásMóvil wants to include TV as part of its multi-play offering, but views a video service as a non-essential element of its business in terms of revenue. Huawei meanwhile sees an opportunity to pilot a new way of offering a video service and to show that it can become a significant player in content.

El Español first reported that MásMóvil was preparing a TV service in partnership with Huawei last May.

According to the paper, MásMóvil plans to minimise the legal requirement for TV service providers to pay 0.9% of their revenues to support pubcaster RTVE by having another company act as integrator and distributor of the project. As this company will be paid a fee for technical services, its revenues will be much smaller than those of MásMóvil or Huawei, reducing the overall contribution required.

The downside of such an arrangement would be that MásMóvil would not be able to provide the TV service to other distributors such as small regional cable players.

According to El Español, Huawei has struck an agreement with Atresmedia to provide content for the service, while discussions with other providers are rumoured. MásMóvil is believed to have had discussions with Amazon and Sky, according to the paper, but will not be able to include HBO, which has a deal with Vodafone.

Huawei is believed to be preparing to use an Android TV set-top for the service provided by Technicolor for the service.