During NexTV Series Mexico & Central America, pay TV operators called for a regulation of OTT services, so they start paying taxes in the country.
Megacable’s Marketing director Gerardo Seifert was one of the executives who referred to this issue. “OTT services and their income must be regulated, and that they pay taxes for what they charge,” he said during his participation in the panel “How OTT pay TV will change TV”, reported El Economista.
Seifert said that one of the problems for the OTTs in Mexico, unlike the United States, is the low average revenue per user (ARPU). “As ARPU is so small in Mexico, compared to the United States, it leave little room to arrive with an attractive offer, here there is no space.”
In the same line, Patricio Zorrilla, vice president of Ultra Telecom, asked that the market have the same conditions for all companies.
José de Jesús Villaseñor, director of Televisión por Cable Tepa considered that OTT platforms, such as Netflix, must pay taxes as national operators do, El Universal reported.
Meanwhile, last week, the Telecommunications Federal Institute (IFT) published its regulatory vision for the period 2019-2023, where it points out the importance of “analyzing the implications of the growth of OTT services in the telecommunications and radio broadcasting sectors.”
Megacable offers a multi-screen platform, called Xview, which integrates linear TV and VOD content. At the end of Q218, the service had 332,000 subscribers. Seifert said that they plan to reach 600,000 users by the end of the year.