A Highway in the Cyberspace of the New Age Dawning 

By Robert Alegre 

Manila Bulletin, January 29, 1997 

There is a new kind of traffic in the air. No. It’s not what you think it is at all! A third dimension in the alchemy of air. 

This is the skyway in the “new age” business industry. It is an industry that has opened up boarders in all angles and dimensions. 

It pierces through all concepts of reality. In the dawning of this age a new age has begun. 

SkyCable outlines the new dimension in the highway of cyberspace-new age dawning. In the next millennium, the Philippines reaches a global highway that is made possible through SkyCable

e. SKYCABLE marks its fifth –year anniversary with a vision towards the next millennium. The “vision is to empower people”. Mel Velarde, the Executive Vice-President envisioned it so. 

In an interview Mel Velarde was asked how far ahead SKYCABLE is thinking already? 

Mel explains:” “We have a game plan until 2004. As a Filipino we don’t want Americans or Europeans even to overshadow the industry. We have vast experience in the communication industry i.e. the latest state-of-the-art technology. Before takes another 10, 20, 30 years just to be at par, now we bring this technology in the Philippines. Now, so if this is available in Silicon Valley it should be available here, right now, today.” 

SKY envisions an empowered society in the information age. Through the SKYCABLE new businesses i.e. Internet, Cable TV, Shopping or Virtual Malls, transaction over the net should lessen the gap or disparity… this results in an empowered people. 

“The people in Sky are very young, aggressive, extremely ambitious, post martial law babies, or martial law babies, who look up to the future, a group that will dominate their chosen marketplace not only in the Philippines, but also outside of the Region… the whole world rate us as one of the leading cable TV companies by Financial Times.” Mel added. 

SKY is dynamic, in fact, revolutionary in mind and concept company. Mel Velarde describes “Sky is a bunch aggressive, young people with strange sometimes brilliant ideas.” 

Over the years SKYCABLE has been a success in terms of corporate performance, contribution to society and sound strategy for the future. 

Corporate performance will show how the company has been growing: in five years the company, at an average, has grown to about 90 percent to 100 percent in terms of gross income.  

Of over a 100 percent in terms of subscribers. 

Net income compounded growth rate since 1994 of 110 percent per year, part of the corporate performance will show also how the people behind Sky have benefitted in the past five years. 

“So, one barometer is employees’ satisfaction. Our employees are the highest paid in the industry… just this year their increases went beyond the 15-20 percent, in fact, even went to 30 percent in terms of compensation.” Mel cited. 

“Also, a good barometer of satisfaction is whether they have pride or sense of achievement in their work. We hired new graduates five years ago, from Mapua, UE, Ateneo, La Salle, Assumption so the average age today is about 26 to .27. You can just imagine five years ago they were in their 19s, 20s and 21s- new graduates,.” Mel, remarked. 

The people in Sky [are] a bunch of crazy people excited to climb up the pole, please customers, do creative work, conceptualize new programs. Another significant factor is the Ssatisfaction of stockholders-even their customers. 

“We have an average customer satisfaction rate of about 86 percent…our aim is to reach 94 percent by 1997.” 

Mel explains that financial figures do not really reflect the true assets of a company. He believes that it is the vast stock of knowledge and how much our people are willing to learn: the people and the learning curve which is too difficult to copy and quantify into measurable terms that makes a company.” 

A story untold: Mel, enthusiastic about the success story of the SKYCABLE re–counts how it was in the old days when they started with the businesses. Now in five fruitful years they can only ponder and think of how they came by and reached this height of success. Thus, Mel has this story to tell: 

The second category, he says, is the contribution to society. Before SKYCABLE came oin the market, we only [had] five free TV channels. Only the rich can buy antenna, quarter of a million worth of satellite dishes; Mel elaborates *“… so the richer you are, the more satellite dishes you’ will have. 

“Now, we have about ten to 12 dishes, you can just imagine if cable wasn’t there; there would have been a huge gap…  information poor and information rich.” 

SKYCABLE believes that cable TV is a way of democratizing the distribution of information, with information one democratizes the distribution of opportunities. 

Democratizing orientation means that Filipinos slowly began seeing the world together in different forms. One need not be an average reader to know what is happening in the world, but he can know the world online anytime he wants and what he wants to know about it, whether the top one hundred can be accessed. 

These are the social implications of principles like access, democratization of technology and the effect on the orientation level of people. 

One problem in the orientation of people is education. A lot of people are educated in the Philippines and yet few people have global competencies or awareness. 

“One of the reasons for this is that -what we had was stock knowledge when we go to school; when we go outside after school- if we’re not linked with the rest of the world, you don’t get immediate up-to-date knowledge or what you call global consciousness… before this was such a new thing like CNN then later on, it became a must, it became a necessity. 

Some people cannot do business without the stock market on-line: without CNN, they cannot make a decision on certain issues. Some people cannot live without cable TV. And TV in a way, under that second category assumes a new life. Before TV was generally a bad concept or bad medium or instrument, then it became a utility, it became a source of information, a source of knowledge.” 

He continues by saying: “Then the idea, of audience fragmentation somehow gave attention to other more sophisticated viewing habits or needs; children now they have their own channel like the I-channel, Filipino movies which were always shown on in TV, in one hour. They’ll have 40 minutes of programing and 20-minute advertising, now you have C-TV and appreciate a decent Filipino movie and not be interrupted unnecessarily. 

There is a rising sophistication, rising expectation– now. People, now, on their own have spontaneously developed a liking for certain programs that they match, or bench marked against English even British or American programs. What happens is that Filipinos are no longer passive viewers of TV; not only do they have to see what you show but they’re acquiring choice… they now discriminate, they now say I like this, and I like that, in a way these are the basic ingredients of an enlightened society—when they can choose in whatever media not only what is available life in a less developed society. Media play a very strong role whenever it’s monopolized or controlled by a very few governments or few private entitles. So that is one good contribution to society–that is very serious– when we talk about these things. 

On the brighter side, you have now entertainment, you have sports, movies, documentary etc... a simple individual can now appreciate ice skating dance, then you have movies from Europe and Japan. One social impact also is news that is on-line: speed becomes not an ideal but a success factor in media. 

Now, shall I cut this discussion? Do I have the right? Nahh… and so I asked: Is the Philippine economy prepared to advance the communication industry? 

Amazingly, Mel has at the tip of his finger this: the economy is an effect, it is always an effect the people are prepared, it will trigger such eventuality. It is really a product of how people have evolved. Economy is not a detached item: a detached entity from the people and people now believe that they are global, we have feedback. Just imagine our President (Ramos) is the news maker for Asia. We’re young [tigers]. 

One need not be wealthy or educated abroad to know and appreciate global news, trends and lifestyles. I think, around the world we are the most ready for information superhighway. 

Why? Does this company have a sound strategy for the future? I surmised. Like a lightning Mel bolts– 

“The take off point is that: we define our business not as a cable TV business, SKY is a lifestyle company engaged in a “new age businesses.” 

From where we started off, we thought of putting cable into every [household]. We just find it necessary to deliver the message at the end of the day. We deliver. T the message, we’re media practitioners, we’re broadcasters, we develop three channels. about five thousand. 

Are these being shown out of the country? 

These are [the] same movies that are being seein in the US. But Oour News, Midday News and Primetime News are seen in the US, these are the Filipino channels broadcast in America. 

What’s with the name-SKYCABLE? You ask a question, you got it! Fast as a speeding bullet, Mel says:  

SKY is the limit! We define our company not as cable or telecommunication, we are a lifestyle company engaged in new age businesses the –only core competence that will be the basis for long term success is creativity. To realize this, we need to have an environment where people can have fun and enjoy a sense of achievement in what they do, these are crazy bunch of people who just think of new things every day, of what gimmick, of what product they could come up with. 

He goes on saying, “we are superior to Hong Kong, we have more subscribers than Singapore. Overall, we are the only cable TV co. Iin the region that is already making money. All of them are still spending a lot of money. We have the highest penetration rate– that’s what SKYCABLE means. 

I’d like to see another company that earned a billion as gross revenue on their fifth year. And we did. 

At that time the market was in much need of multi-channel distribution. There was already democracy in the country that rewards initiative. 

We were good enough to face that opportunity. I think we were just organized from the ground up, hire new graduates, believed in our programming and in our products, we just layer [laid] out cables here and there, identified the markets, studied them, got the right price, right service, etc.. Eetc.  

We have “Fit”.  

When we make a mistake, we fix it and move on.  

Fit means every factor reinforces each other, the kind of people you have, the marketing strategy, place, product economy: without that fit we would not have been successful- these people are hard-working, models, that represent the best in the Filipino youth. Given the training and the opportunity to be part of a technology-based company, they will succeed and excel. 

Another is the command of technology and its strategic relevance with marketing. Philippine market is a very exciting market. Before there were only two kinds of market i.e. the rich and the poor. Now there are one thousand markets i.e. the movie lovers and each kind of movies they want, the sports lovers, Western side, the European sports, American sports, Asian sports, even children now have their own channel. 

But when it comes to “what program you’d be willing to pay for as a primary choice and what you merely want to watch” may be different. Now, is this market big enough for us to conceptualize a program for? 

“Right now we are at the middle of mass production or mass distribution, to customize and personalize programs—that’s why the internet—I am channels. Ii.e. i–channel, quality” Filipino Cchannels and a quality English Cchannel and launch three channels via satellite. Because we thought of what the market wants, we made a quality Filipino channel and a quality English movie channel, we did not depend on CNN, HBOs other foreign channels etc. We are not just an ordinary cable TV company in the Philippines that merely receive and transmit. We originated programming. 

We would like to be known as a lifestyle company engaged in new age businesses. Why lifestyle? It is because we enhance the lifestyle of our subscribers. 

This is some form of an enhancement especially sports comers to movie viewer. Recently, we launched SKYCARD, a credit card with Master Card, [it’s] a way of enhancing their lifestyle, they can shop using our TV mall- we launched internet, we are now the number one service provider in the Philippines. 

Soon you’ll use the SKYCARD to transact business on the internet, transaction on the net thru cyberspace, check account balance, you can buy, you can be almost anything on the SKYINTERNET, pick a service in [on]our internet, we give you on-line news, on-line information and all sorts of information. 

And we think that is a new winner for our company. 

So, we have cable, i-channel, Filipino movies, Internet, Skycard and other form of distribution. We went to the provinces and bought Cable TV. 

These are new age businesses. What we’ll do is to use the infrastructure and work with different sectors of society. Use that infrastructure to run and transmit messages on their own just like a highway where people will drive over it, where vehicles would go, let’s say for example La Salle, Ateneo would like to use our infrastructure for their electronic library… they can use it. There’s a legal sector, there’s a group that digitized the Supreme Court decisions… they can use our infrastructure to transmit their information. 

Print media is now on-line also, it can also use this infrastructure, but this is highspeed, this is not like your typical telephone that is 9.6 or 28.8 that will require you three days to download a CD ROM. 

We would like to offer our infrastructure which is now the de facto information superhighway in the Philippines. 

Eventually it uses one major distribution system for information and other transactions. It could be the platform, it could be internet, or ATM and what this will all do, we’ll be at par, if not surpass the infrastructure in most countries– that alone, I think would be a good contribution to society. 

We have a high of 90 percent to a low of 60 percent penetration, with a market that is highly competitive. We are number one in all the markets we ventured, there are markets that are very loyal to quality programming, markets that recognize price as a primary factor, so we become flexible in our approach or strategy in the provinces. 

The reach is as far as Ilocos in the North to Gen santos in South. 

To what extent do you share the market? 

We have about 250 thousand subscribers that includes programming distribution businesses and cable TV distribution available in the Philippines. These are the three channels and for internet we have [personalized] programming,. We are very excited about that, because it empowers the individual, we can create and transmit his own messages – so this is part of our vision which is to empower people. 

How would you characterize the market? 

Right now the Philippine market, in our point of view, has become complicated and sophisticated. 

We have begun to realize that we are really a melting pot. “You know I spoke with my counterpart in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Malaysia and Indonesia. I have this cable and satellite broadcasters‘ association., I| found out that their markets are not that sophisticated, they are at the time when T.V. has just being deregulated-. Sso, everybody [was] either excited about or indifferent to cable TV. Why? Because there were only; government stations existing except for Hong Kong. 

Subscribers know what they want. Before “you give the first set of channels- they were satisfiers, they paid for cable because of their channels– now: they want something more. 

Filipinos ask for more, there’s this doctor’s group who wants car racing, Russian community wants their own programming so is the Spanish or even Indian community. 

What about the market? Do we have control of the market? 

Mel was quick to point out, “before, you can control the market by owning a machine, owning a license, because of the information society there is no such thing as control, there is only such thing as speed to market or parallel innovation i.e it is not one party that makes you survive for the next five years, so I am using the i-channel to get the children as a market, I am using the Filipino channel to get the Filipino movie lovers etc. And at the same time, I go after the internet because it is new. And then we have to put in cable TV shopping so that we have product and transaction, Credit Card so that the subscribers will have a facility to use. 

So, this is not a cable TV company anymore, there’re too many things. For what? Well to survive and to excel. You have to have a product that you can market and polish it with other distribution systems. 

Our asset now is our customer, loyal and satisfied customer– base. And we want to continue innovating new products and services. 

That’s why I want to telecommute, you work at home, you interview us, you have camera we are all [linked], we all do collaborative work, I download this file and send all the [files and it’s] all –digital and online; why, can’t we do all of this, it will empower you… we can even work in the farm and enjoy the fresh air and’ work through the internet, we have virtual communities., 

What do we expect in 1997? 

We want to go public in 1997, we want to share the benefit of our growth to our subscribers and public by going out with IPO. Raising new capital, we want to be available in all other places in the country. Launch new businesses like internet, where all sectors of society can use. 

Now- a highway in the Cyberspace of the New Age Dawning surf an interface to a new net.