The strong marketing power of Dutch incumbent KPN is starting to hurt subscriber numbers at the country’s largest cable nets, UPC and Ziggo.
According to the latest quarterly figures from Liberty Global, UPC Netherlands has shown the biggest decline in TV subscriptions during the first quarter of the year.
An analysis by the Dutch website digitalekabeltelevisie.nl shows that its losses are the biggest in six years’ time. During the quarter, the cabler lost 32,700 homes and now serves a total of 1,696,900 households. This represents a penetration rate of just 60% of all homes passed.
The number of homes that take the UPC digital TV product has risen 11,300 to 1,089,300, meaning 64.2% of all UPC customers now have digital TV.
As a result, KPN has now surpassed UPC as the number two digital TV platform in the country. KPN now boasts 1,845,000 homes, of which 1,128,000 are IPTV subs and 717,000 DTT homes, making it also the second largest TV provider.
Ziggo remains the number one digital TV provider with 2,851,000 connected homes a penetration rate of 67.7%, but is also losing ground to KPN.
The chart below shows the number of UPC digital TV homes, homes connected as well as homes passed.