Competitive pressures from DTH and IPTV services led to a loss of 54,500 subscribers on the UPC Broadband network in Q1. Higher levels of churn in the Netherlands, Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic (see separate story) were compensated in part by the addition of 182,000 broadband internet subscribers, 177,000 telephony subscribers and 293,000 organic digital subscribers.
Belgium (where Telenet is accounted for directly by Liberty Global), the Czech Republic, and Switzerland accounted for the majority of the company’s digital cable growth.
While the addition of 12,400 digital subscribers was not enough to compensate for the loss of 45,900 analogue subscribers in the Netherlands, the introduction of advanced digital video features has pushed up ARPU in the market from €4 at the end of 2006 to €8 at the end of 2007.
Telenet remains the star performer. The Belgian cablenet generating ARPU of €33.21 in the first quarter with over 40% of subscribers taking bundled services.
Average ARPU across UPC Broadband was €22.84 compared to 21.29 one year ago.
