Sky Perfect Communications Inc., operator of the Sky PerfecTV digital satellite broadcasting service, said Thursday it will acquire smaller rival Plat One Corp. through a share swap on March 1.

With the acquisition, Sky Perfect will become the only communications satellite service provider in Japan.

The announcement came as CS broadcasting service providers are under growing pressure to secure subscribers amid intensifying competition.

Sky Perfect said it will merge its Sky PerfecTV 2 service with the service provided by Plat One. The acquisition will be carried out by swapping one Plat One share for 0.165 of a Sky Perfect share. Plat One will be dissolved.

Sky Perfect provides the Sky PerfecTV 2 service for use by CS 110-degree digital satellite broadcasting operations. The service has about 63,000 subscribers.

Its main service, Sky PerfecTV, has 3 million subscribers and uses a different system. It will not be affected by the acquisition.

Sky Perfect had a net loss of 18.9 billion yen on revenue of 70.3 billion yen for the fiscal year that ended last March.

Itochu and other companies set up what is known today as Sky Perfect in 1994, beginning Japan's first digital satellite broadcasting services in 1996. It merged with Japan Sky Broadcasting Co. (JSkyB) in 1998.

Sony Broadcast Media Co., Fuji Television Network Inc. and Itochu Corp. are the largest shareholders in Sky Perfect, each having a 12.65 percent stake.

Plat One, with some 30,000 subscribers, logged a 1.8 billion yen net loss on revenue of 1.86 billion yen for the business year that ended in February.

Plat One was established in 2000 by a group of companies, including Mitsubishi Corp. and Nippon Television Network Corp., and started services in 2002.