Televisa adds Internet services

Mexican media giant Televisa launched a new content platform Wednesday for Web surfers across Latin America to download movies, TV shows and music, and it plans to offer phone services early next year.

Televisa’s latest drive to expand revenue outside its core broadcast business comes just weeks after the Mexican government issued rules aimed at boosting communications in a country where more than half of its 100 million population lacks access to basic phone services.

Via the Internet content platform, online clients can watch live shows including soap operas and soccer matches or download movies or sitcoms from as many as 14 days ago. The service will be $12 monthly or $86 annually.

Live television over the Internet will not be available for users in the U.S., said Juan Saldivar, chief executive of Televisa’s online business Esmas.com.

Clients will also be able to get vintage shows, movies and soap operas, including individual chapters of some series, for an additional cost.

The company wants to keep a flat fee of about $1 on those archive downloads.

Televisa’s cable television unit Cablevision said it would tap the phone business in February, a move that would make it a competitor of Mexico’s dominant fixed-line telecommunications company Telefonos de Mexico, or Telmex.

“In February we will be offering the triple play: broadband, phone and TV,” Cablevision Chief Executive Jean Paul Broc said.

Triple play will allow the delivery of high-speed Internet, television and phone services over a single connection and is expected to bring down prices for customers.

Because of rules recently approved by the Mexican government, phone companies will be able to enter the television market, and cable and other media firms will be able to offer phone services.

Broc said current Cablevision customers with video and Internet packages would get a 35% discount if they also purchased the phone service.

With a solid programming distribution all across Latin America and a leading position in the Mexican market, Televisa has been looking for new revenue sources.

The company’s growth in the U.S. Latino market slowed after several legal and management disagreements with its partner Univision Communications Inc. The broadcasters share a long-term programming deal.

Televisa also launched a video-on-demand service Wednesday that would include some of its regular programming plus exclusive shows, available to clients of Cablevision, which operates only in the profitable Mexico City area.