During a press conference at the CeBIT in Hanover, Deutsche Telekom said it is targeting between 2.5 million to 3 million customers for its IPTV offer ‘T-Entertain’ by the end of 2011. Christian P. Illek, the company’s marketing manager for its German operations, also said he wants to expand its subscriber base by 600,000 in the course of this year. At the end of 2009, the platform surpassed the 1 million connected homes mark.
The aim of the incumbent telecoms operator is to beat Sky Deutschland, and in order to achieve this has reworked its television offer with new prices and packaging. New is the possibility to just subscribe to the IPTV service without broadband access. The company is also heralding its improved VOD service, which includes 1,000 HD titles on-demand. HD channels including Das Erste HD, ZDF HD and Arte HD are available in areas served with VDSL. The offer also includes Bundesliga football in HD.
Illek said the operator is now simplifying its packaging with just two complete packages and eight new channel bouquets. People can now choose between Entertain Comfort, which costs €44.95 and Entertain Premium, which costs €49.95. Prices have gone down: formerly, the top-tier package cost €64.95.
Both packages offer the basic TV offer with about 70 channels, 16 Mbps broadband access and access to the 10,000 titles strong VOD library. The Premium bouquet adds more channels including TNT Film, Sci Fi, RTL Crime, AXN, Sat.1 Comedy and Kinowelt TV. It is also possible to buy just the IPTV service without broadband access for €27.95 a month.
In addition, people can choose between eight thematic packages including Movies and TV Series (13th Street, Kinowelt TV, Sci Fi, AXN and TNT Serie), Sports (ESPN America, Eurosport 2 and Extreme Sports Channel), Documentaries (History, Discovery Channel and National Geographic), Kids (Disney Channel, Cartoon Network and ‘others’), Lifestyle (Romance TV, RTL Living and E! Entertainment) and Adult Entertainment (Lust Pur and Hustler TV), each costing between €2.95 and €5.95.
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Connected TV Forecasts NEW REPORT. The number of TV sets connected to the Internet will reach 551 million by 2016 for the 40 countries covered in this report from Digital TV Research, up from 124 million at end-2010. The report states that this translates to 20% of global TV sets by 2016, up from only 6% at end-2010. Published in November 2011, this 83-page PDF report is the most geographically comprehensive to ever be published.