German voices

Julian Clover visits ANGA Cable to find the German cable industry developing new services, despite itself.

Time and again the problems in developing multichannel TV services in Germany are put down to the strength of the free-to-air channels. Strong public broadcasters ARD and ZDF line up alongside the big commercial stations RTL, Sat 1 and Pro 7.

This is more than just the quality of the primetime schedule. The commercial broadcasters have done little to promote digital broadcasting. Although initially keen to take the subsidies that were on offer they remain absent from the DTT system in parts of the country and charge for EPG data that looks further than 24 hours.

Some green shoots could certainly be spied at ANGA Cable, the annual German event, which is becoming increasingly international. The RTL Group and ProSiebenSat.1 have both agreed to have their channels carried on the headend-in-the-sky being developed by Eutelsat and cablenet Tele Columbus as part of the satellite operator’s Kabelkiosk – itself given top billing on the Eutelsat stand.

The channels will be encrypted, so removing one of the key complaints of the private broadcasters, though still at odds with being free-to-air in analogue. Maybe it will turn out that the broadcasters were forward thinking in protecting their revenues against falling advertising.

After a slow start German cable is finally converting its subscriber base to digital Unitymedia’s Palm Sandhu told delegates how the operator had converted 20% in a six-month period through the Jetzt Digital campaign. The benefits are not just in the additional revenues from digital TV services but also telephony and broadband.

Kabel Deutschland gained 800,000 pay-TV subscribers and doubled its telephony and broadband subscribers. The cable operators have let Deutsche Telekom get well out of the blocks in the sale of ADSL subscriptions. It may be that DOCSIS 3.0 will help cable redress the balance, but it should be remembered that one of the stated aims of the ReDeSign consortium is to extend the lifetime of HFC networks.

There was more than one reference to the German cable infrastructure created in the early 1980s for Deutsche Telekom and now probably creating as many problems as solutions following the break-up of Telekom’s cable interests and the creation of the private sector in tandem with the last mile operators that in many cases hold the customer relationship.