TM reaches out to French residents

Telekom Malaysia (TM) has signed a deal with FRANCE 24 to provide the French community in Malaysia with the country's first French channel via TM's HyppTV.With programmes encompassing news coverage, news magazines and special reports, FRANCE 24, which reaches 245 million households throughout the world with 45 million TV viewers each week, will broadcast in French, English and Arabic.When contacted by A+M, Jeremy Kung (pictured), executive vice president of new media TM said, "This offering will complement the other international and local news that are already available on HyppTV such as Euronews (Ch 123), Bloomberg TV (Ch 125), Al Jazeera, DW-TV Asia + and  Channel News Asia , DW , Bernama TV, The Capital, just to name a few."He added there are about 4,000 French expatriates in Malaysia and 20,000-strong Francophone community based in Kuala Lumpur including students and tourists from other French-speaking countries such as Belgium and Switzerland."In differentiating ourselves against the competition, TM is definitely looking at all options right now, one of which is to make TM an aggregator for aggregators, which is very much in line with what we do in HSBB [high speed broadband]," said Kung.The channel offering will be promoted via TM HyppTV on-ground activities, HyppTV printed materials and Facebook page, while a contest will run until 31 May for FRANCE 24 subscribers.Kung declined to comment on TM's investment into bringing the channel to viewers.