HBO accuses Flow of 'piracy'
Trinidad & Tobago Newsday
Friday, May 11 2007Miguel Oliva, HBO Latin America Group VP Public Relations and Corporate Affairs, has accused local cable company Columbus Communications of “piracy” and said the company had no ongoing negotiations with the company to obtain the movie channels, HBO and Cinemax.
Columbus is sticking to their guns though, asserting that they are negotiating with the Latin American group, and the negotiations are almost complete.
Oliva was in Trinidad for the past two days to address claims made by Columbus that recent interruptions in the feed for the two movie channels were due to a network upgrade and that local customers will have the option to pay an additional fee for a premium movie package, which will include HBO and Cinemax.
During the second week of April both Cinemax and HBO were not accessible to Columbus’ analog customers for several days.
According to Columbus’ Director of sales, communications and marketing Rhea Yaw Ching, that interruption was due to a weak satellite feed which resulted in disruptions in the transmission of the particular channels. The problem cleared up on April 12 because Columbus purchased another satellite dish with longer antennas to strengthen the signal from the satellite.
The cable company reshuffled their analog channel line-up on May 1 and at that time, Marketing and Communications Manager Shelly Ann Hee Chung said some movie channels which are currently in the analog basic line-up will be included in a “Premium Movie Package” which will be accessible to customers once they pay a subscription fee. At present the movie package is free of charge, but the fee will be charged once negotiations with the HBO group is completed.
Oliva, however, said yesterday, “HBO and Columbus Communic-ations are not negotiating anything. We have not heard from them (Columbus) at any point. If they are experiencing difficulties with their signal, it is because they are stealing it and they have been stealing it for quite a long time.
“Subscribers should not be misled, they should know they are paying for a service that the cable operator (Columbus) is stealing. That is called piracy,” he said.
He expressed confidence that the Telecommunications Authority of Trinidad and Tobago (TATT) will do its utmost to rectify the situation. “Of course we are confident that the authorities will make a final move to settle this situation, and a state of law is going to prevail,” he said.
He said HBO is willing to sell the licence to Columbus if they are willing to approach the company.
