Now that Astro has come to its end of satellite monopoly after 20 years, the Measat owned broadcast service is about to face its stiffest adversary in the form of Tan Sri Vincent Tan owned Ansa Broadcast.

Formerly known as U Television and before that MiTV, the tycoon has been very keen to owning the living room space of Malaysian ever since Astro was introduced, however despite various attempts the shareholder in U Mobile failed to gain a grip over the satellite broadcaster. Many others have  also tried, remember MegaTV by TV3 a set-top box format with another tiny dish that uses terrestrial signal to broadcast and how about the billion ringgit invested ABNXcess that showed so much promise but collapsed due to in-apt top management with political interest and a team that lacked technical know how. All of them tried but could not shake the incumbent who is currently occupying the attention of over 5.2 million households.

But that’s about to change with the end of the monopoly, now anyone can launch a satellite service and offer programs over similar platform. According to a local English daily, Ansa Broadcast is gearing up to compete this time with more market knowledge and better technology. Disruption in traditional broadcast is being challenged by new OTT players like Netflix, iFlix, Viu and others using the internet as the medium. They provide high quality videos, streamed over any screens and quite possibly at lower prices due to their reduced operating cost.

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For Ansa to rattle Astro, they will need to have a warchest filled with cash to purchase content quickly and put a bid for the next English Premier League live rights. The battle will be arduous. usurping a 20 year dominant player will be tough, but streaming service providers have proven its possible using mostly start-up capital to expand quickly. Programs on the satellite channels are getting stale and repetitive claimed one user who has now unsubscribed to the service, anyone calling to cancel Astro will receive additional deals to keep them on board. Goes to show the broadcaster has been feeling the heat with increased cancellation.

Vincent Tan has the resources to acquire the necessary arsenal he needs to take on the giant the second time around, it will come down to his go-to market strategy that’s key. Smelling blood in the waters, he will need to ward of streaming operators and Free-To-Air TV who are also finding it challenging in these disruptive times. But knowing the hold no bars approach the business man has, the Berjaya Chairman must have something up his sleeve, could it have something to do with 5G and U Mobile?

For now the dream is becoming closer to reality already having 5 million mobile screens locked in to his company’s service and will now need to replicate that with Ansa.