Unitymedia passed into profit for the first time in the first quarter. The German cable company serving the state of North Rhine Westphalia reported €44 million, on an adjusted EBITDA of €105 million and revenues of €299 million for the period ending March 31, 2008.
“The success of our strategy is to upsell the basic cable to Unity3Play,” CEO Palm Sandhu told Broadband TV News. “We’re showing how German cable can be successful by focussing on the triple play model.”
Revenues from basic cable subscriptions increased by 2% year-on-year to €136.5 million. The increase was partly offset by churn that reduced the number of basic cable subscribers from 4,886,000 to 4,733,000. Basic cable ARPU increased slightly from €9.12 to €9.60 as digital homes almost doubled to 925,000.
In turn this led to a fall in the digital TV pay ARPU from €10.73 to €10.10 as newer entrants chose smaller packages. Unlike Premiere, which recently announced plans to increase the cost of entry, Sandhu says Unitymeda’s strategy is to offer cheaper bundles. “We appeal to a broader interest group, whereas Premiere is more focused on selling bundles of sports and film subscriptions.” He said Unitymedia benefited enormously from economies of scale.
