Although Astro monopolizes the paid-television market in Malaysia not many investors like the stock, at least not me especially after the company tried to put its foot onto Indonesian soil. Just ask any of the existing Astro All Asia Network Plc (KLSE: ASTRO, stock-code 5076) customers and chances are majority of them will give their thumbs-down for obvious reasons. Basically they (the customers) do not have other choice even though they knew the services sucks big time, not to mention the parasite-like monthly fees imposed.

Thanks to Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC), Ministry of Energy, Water and Communications (makes you want to kick former Minister Lim Keng Yaik’s butt), unlisted pay-TV operator MITV Corporation Sdn Bhd (now known as U Telecom Media Holdings Sdn Bhd) and a whole bunch of other idiots, customers are still being screwed. But then with the untouchable billionaire Ananda Krishnan standing between Astro and the policy makers, it would be easier to blow up Mongolian model with C4 than to ask the company to buck-up *grin*.

While I’m not suggesting Astro should stay indoor and live under the coconut shell, in reality its’ venture into Indonesia could be the biggest mistake it ever made. It might be a wise move to cut loss while it can since the company continues to register loss of RM6.16 million the financial year ended Jan 31, 2008. Revenue rose 17% to RM2.6bil from RM2.22bil while earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) rose by RM29mil or 5.5% to RM556.5mil. Guess where’s the revenue come from? In short, it was the Malaysian subscribers who are subsidizing the Astro Indonesia-venture to the extent that it’s tiny EPS (earnings per share) of 8.32 sen was reduced to negative EPS or loss-per-share of 0.32 sen.

Hence, when the newly appointed Energy, Water and Communications Minister Shaziman Abu Mansor said Astro will not be allowed to introduce new channels until the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (SKMM) is satisfied with its efforts to improve its services, I’ll take that with a pinch of salt. Shaziman’s statement was not new and it would be an uphill task for him to direct the bully Astro to address problems such as poor service, billing problems and charges that burden users.

Due to the needs to squeeze every penny from Malaysian to reduce losses in regional expansion such as Indonesia and India, ridiculous extra charges were imposed such as RM10 for late payment charge, RM20 for reconnection fee and RM50 fee minimum charge for technical services. Now, I’m sure most of the readers experienced the RM50 fee before. Normally when you have problem with reception (common problem) you’ll call Astro customer hotline. Many times you’ll be put on hold and bombarded with advertisement; music etc till you gave up. If you’re lucky enough the customer support will guide you through the normal standard trouble-shooting steps such as checking the satellite signal or off the decoder and wait for 20-minute before retry.

Strangely most of the time it doesn’t work and if you care to call back, the customer support will tell you to engage technical support of which was outsourced to outsiders with the minimum charge of RM50 just to show up at your doorstep. It’s laughable that Shaziman is giving Astro a deadline, by end of 2008, to migrate (because Broadcasting Act and Telecommunication Act which governed Astro had been abolished) to the Communication and Multimedia Act, as promised in 1997. Wow! Astro was telling the entire previous Ministers to fly kites since 1997 and this Shaziman expect he could do the magic now? Does he know how much Astro’s tycoon has contributed to the National Front’s coffer for the recent 12th general election campaign?

With 126 channels under its belt, Astro does not need to rush to comply with the Act since the offerings are more than the subscribers could take. In fact, some of the programs are so outdated that my grandma was complaining about it the other day. And they have the cheeks to call me up to subscribe to their Astro-On-Demand (hail the pirated DVDs *grin, I’m no fan of pirates*) because the take-up-rate was poor.

What this new Minister should do is to force Astro to sign the dotted-line and probably limit the mind-boggling excessive advertisements served (on Astro). It would be nice to invite other players elsewhere to create some competitions although Astro is expected to maintain its domain in the Chinese-channels.

Other Articles That May Interest You …

• Astro trying to make money with Virgin
• ASTRO Bullying Customers But Minister Is Helpless
• ASTRO Measat-3 Facing Problem Migrating Channels

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April 9th, 2008 by financetwitter

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