Sky Pacific channels to move to Walesi this year

Sky Pacific and Walesi have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to begin preparatory work to see the distribution of Sky Pacific channels on the Walesi platform later this year.

Digicel Founder, Chairman and Interim CEO Denis O’Brien, signed the MOU with Walesi Chairman Sharvada Sharma at the Digicel headquarters in Nabua.

O’Brien says Sky Pacific will start preparatory work for channel delivery and billing integration soon to enable the rollout of Sky Pacific subscriptions via Walesi later this year.

O’Brien says they are all about connecting people to the things they love most. He says by distributing the Sky Pacific content and selected on‑demand content on the Walesi platform, they will be able to offer a broader choice of the best content to Fijians as well as multiple options for them to access their preferred content.

Sharvada Sharma says this is a milestone step for Walesi as they fully realise the potential of Digital TV delivery in the country.

Sharma says Walesi will provide the necessary infrastructure to deliver Sky Pacific’s 25 TV channels via Digital Terrestrial Television and later on the same content will be available on smartphones.

Both parties will keep customers informed as work progresses this year.

Meanwhile Attorney General, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum had earlier confirmed that talks were taking place between technicians of the government owned, Walesi and Pay TV company, Sky Pacific for Sky Pacific to move to the Walesi Digital TV platform when the analog platform is switched off.

While giving an update on Walesi TV, Sayed‑Khaiyum said the plan is to switch off the analog platform by June 2019.

This means the only system used by everyone would be the Walesi Box and people would just have to pay for the Sky Pacific channels to be activated on the Walesi box.

He had also confirmed that Walesi would charge Sky Pacific fees for the channels that would be on the box.

Sayed-Khaiyum had earlier said that the total amount of fees per channel to be paid by Sky Pacific was yet to be determined.