Astro and Maxis sign partnership

Astro Malaysia Holdings and Maxis have teamed up to bring Astro TV and radio, high-speed broadband and voice to Malaysian consumers and households.Through the partnership, Maxis will now be the fibre broadband service provider for the Astro B.yond IPTV service, while Astro will be the IPTV service provider for all Maxis fixed and wireless platforms.In addition to this partnership, Astro and Maxis have also tied up a co-marketing mobile partnership for Astro On-The-Go services to Maxis customers.Dato' Rohana Rozhan (pictured), CEO of Astro Malaysia Holdings, said Astro serves 3.1 million Malaysian households today and aspires to further establish relevance with all Malaysians."Our collaboration with Maxis gives us an additional 1.3 million fibre homes to market Astro B.yond IPTV to, and of that 1.3 million, 1 million are already Astro customers," said Rozhan.According to Maxis joint chief operating officer Mark Dioguardi, "In addition to offering Astro IPTV and On-The-Go services together with their fibre and wireless internet packages, Maxis will have a unique content service developed by Astro specially for Maxis customers."In 2009, Astro switched its platform to Astro B.yond and launched its IPTV offering in 2011 after partnering with TIME dotcom to bring the service to multi-dwelling units.Rozhan said the agreement with TIME remains, while Maxis' footprint will complement TIME's by covering single dwelling units.The tie-up is a 10-year partnership with Astro being Maxis' IPTV content service provider for three years.Three months ago, Maxis added 14 content providers to its own IPTV service to deliver more content to its Home Fibre Internet customers.Sandip Das, CEO of Maxis, said those partnerships remain and it will not change commitments to them."Over the next few weeks, we will be in talks with those content providers to see how things can work in the new context," added Das (second from right).Both Astro and Maxis will develop and co-market consumer packages combining Astro B.yond IPTV and Astro On-The-Go services, together with Maxis' Fibre Internet, Mobile Internet, Wireless Internet and ADSL services.The packages are in the making, targeted to hit the market in a quarter or two through all its respective distribution channels.