Times are a changing

Should CEE’s cable industry be worried about growing competition from the DTH, IPTV and DTT sectors? It’s certainly a straightforward enough question, but requires much more than a simple yes/no answer.

In a session entitled Look East for Fast Change that I moderated at this week’s Cable Congress in Madrid, most panellists played down the threat that other delivery platforms might pose to the cable industry.

And, of course, there was strong justification in their claims: UPC has a presence in both the cable and DTH sectors in no fewer than four CEE markets (Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania), and five if Poland, where its parent company has an equity interest in Cyfra+, is included.

What is more, we are certainly moving rapidly towards an era dominated by multimedia companies with a presence in the TV, radio, publishing and Internet sectors, rather than just any one.

Ultimately, arguments about whether cable and other delivery platforms, and which are performing better, will become redundant in a media industry dominated by one or two players.

However, for now at least, DTH, and to a lesser degree IPTV, cannot be dismissed as being of little or no concern to CEE’s cable industry as a whole. The recent explosion of DTH platforms across the region – it is now served by around 30 – coupled with the success of such existing services as Cyfrowy Polsat in Poland and CS Link in the Czech Republic – is a wake-up call for the cable industry that it would be unwise to ignore.

IPTV, too, is starting to make in impact, especially in Russia, the Czech Republic, Baltic Republics and Slovenia. Though its prospects look far from promising in some markets – Bulgaria and Romania spring to mind – in the region as a whole it probably has a much better future than many predict.

Of particular interest must be the performance of the Romanian DTH platform Dolce. Though the last of five DTH platforms to launch, it now has just over 500,000 subscribers, or one in three of the total, and is operated by the incumbent telco Romtelecom, which has yet to launch an IPTV service.

The cable industry in CEE would probably be wise not to underestimate the challenge it faces from other platforms. However, it is more than capable of holding its own and indeed maintaining a strong position in what is a rapidly changing marketplace.