Keeping up with the Koreans: PCCW to offer OTT for TV series content in Hong Kong and beyond

Telecom giant PCCW is expanding into the OTT frontier with a new platform dedicated to fresh Korean TV content eyeing markets in Hong Kong and beyond, despite foreseeable intense competition.

Janice Lee, managing director of PCCW Media Group, said the launch of new platform Viu OTT was an attempt to swiftly respond to changing audience habits locally and abroad, despite advertising dollars not yet catching up with the fast-growing online media industry.

“Audiences watch content all over the world and they want the content now,” Lee said. “But TV stations are too slow.”

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The launch of the new OTT platform followed PCCW’s earlier acquisition of Vuclip, a mobile video-on-demand platform that has 8 million subscribers. The new platform can be viewed on smartphones, tablets and computers.

She said local and regional audiences were keen on foreign TV content, particularly Korean and American drama series. But they had to wait a long time for these shows to appear in their local TV channels due to rights issues and post-production times in local markets.

Over-the-top content, or OTT, is a way of transmitting audio-visual content via the internet. It has become a new battleground for media corporations as mainland-owned LeTV, home-grown broadcasting giant TVB, American success story Netflix, and FOX International Channels are venturing into OTT in the coming six months.

Lee said the new Viu OTT platform primarily offered fresh TV content from South Korea for free in Hong Kong.