International Broadcasting Corporation (1989 1998) Before the establishment of IBC, Thailand had five television networks (3, 5, 7, 9, 11). The company was founded in 1985 with
Thaksin Shinawatra presenting a proposal for a cable television project. The IBC project also received consultancy from an America's Clearview International, which, in its assessment of a cable television service for
Tonga in 1983, was already planning something similar in Thailand. The International Broadcasting Corporation (IBC), the first national
cable TV provider, was established on April 17, 1989, by Thaksin Shinawatra at the time when he was the chairperson of Shinawatra Computer Co., Ltd. The company later entered into a partnership with Clearview Wireless.
MCOT gave the IBC a twenty-year concession to provide subscription television service. The IBC broadcasts its programs via
super high frequency microwaves using
MMDS. It was the only Thai cable company until June 1990, until MCOT approved a second license to Siam Broadcasting Co, Ltd, which was renamed as
Thai Sky TV. In 1991, when it launched, IBC launched a channel entirely in Thai to compete. In 1997, the South AfricanDutch company,
MIH Limited, bought a sixteen percent stake in the IBC. The IBC obtained most program content from the channels of other countries including
HBO,
CNN and
ESPN.
UTV Cable Network (1993 1998) UTV Cable Network was founded on October 2, 1992, to provide cable service of their own under TelecomAsia (now True Corporation). In September 1995, UTV began a CATV service in the
Bangkok metropolitan area. The service was provided on a hybrid fiber coaxial network. The cable technology allowed a number of channels to be offered with high-quality sound and pictures. It also provided a
pay-per-view option. By 1997, the hybrid fiber-coaxial cable network reached about 800,000 homes. In 1997, UTV sold the cable infrastructure component of its business to its sister company, Asia Multimedia Company Limited. This allowed UTV to focus on content and service delivery to subscribers.
Merger with United Broadcasting Corporation (1998-2006) In February 1998, after the onset of the
1997 Asian financial crisis, the IBC was merged with UTV in order to decrease operational costs. The United Broadcasting Corporation (UBC) was formed on July 1, 1998. The UBC later split into two companies: UBC PCL. which provided a pay-television service via the IBC's satellite transmission concession and UBC Cable Co., Ltd. which provided a pay-television service via UTV's cable concession. In late 1998, Shin Corporation (formerly Shinawatra Computer Co., Ltd. and now
Intouch Holdings) sold their entire stake in UBC to TelecomAsia.
UBC-True (2006 2007) In November 2005, True Corporation (True) bought a 30.59% stake in UBC from MIH Holdings. It launched a tender offer for the 221 million shares outstanding at 26.5 baht per share and delisted UBC from the
Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET). UBC rebranded to "UBC-True" in April 2006. UBC was delisted from SET on April 11, 2006. On April 2, 2006, UBC-True announced that it would launch the documentary channels Explore 1, Explore 2, and Explore 3 in October 2006. UBC-True also announced the launch of entertainment channels, G-Square and UBC Preview, followed by two music channels, Majung TV and True Music.
TrueVisions (2007 present) On January 24, 2007, UBC-True was re-branded as "TrueVisions" (at the time called TrueVisions UBC). It announced its purchase of exclusive rights to the
Premier League. On July 12, 2012, after a long battle on
Copyright infringement (piracy), TrueVisions switched its content encryption system to
VideoGuard. It also upgraded its video encryption from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4. This was used with the new HD set-top box launched in October 2011. In 2012, TrueVisions lost its bid for the 2013 2016 Premier League broadcast rights to a new company,
CTH. In 2016, the company restored its rights to broadcast Premier League on 6 channels of
beIN Sports, the
Qatar based sports network. TrueVisions also won the rights to broadcast the
Premier League in
Thailand for three more seasons, from 2019 through 2022. ==Subscribers==