Turnaround begins for ONO

September was the first month of positive additions for ONO since July 2008, but the Spanish cablenet still faced a third quarter reduction in residential customers of 0.7%.

The company recorded EBITDA of €178m compared to €179m in the same period of 2008.

The loss of 16,000 customers was brought about by the combination of seasonal factors and a new user’s rights directive that forces operators to disconnect customers within two days of their request, rather than the 15-day period under the previous directive. 5,000 customers were lost as a consequence of the new directive, taking the total at September 30, 2009 to 1,888,000. Gross churn was also hit, rising by 2.4pp to 19.4%.

ONO can claim over 100,000 customers of Mediapro’s newly launched pay-TV football channel Gol TV. The agreement with Mediapro also includes the rights to retramsmit pay-per-view matches, a much needed feature as buyrates have fallen since the reorganisation of Spanish football rights earlier this year.

Triple Play services were taken by 35% of the subscriber base on Q3 2008, compared to 34% in Q3 2008. A cross sale campaign resulted in the number of RGUs taken per customer rising from 2.11 in September 2008 to 2.16 in 2009.