Canal Digital lost subscribers, but revenues climbed to NOK1,633 (€202.7m) in the second quarter, although EBITDA at the Nordic pay-TV platform ultimately fell. Canal Digital has been able to use HD to increase the hardware sales to both DTH and cable subscribers; additional services also pushing up ARPU on the cablenet. Since Canal Digital dropped its additional fee for high definition reception the number of HD households has doubled.
DTH subscribers fell by 3,000 on the quarter to 1,121,000, seemingly resisting the pressures that caused a drop of 15,000 homes at rival Viasat, blamed on the first time availability of the Big 5 Norwegian channels on both the DTH platforms. Canal Digital’s cable subscribers increased by 24,000 to 734,000 with cable delivered broadband internet adding 9,000 subscribers to 149,000.
The introduction of digital terrestrial television and increased sales at encryption specialist Conax pushed up EBITDA in the Transmission and Encryption segment to NOK309 million compared to NOK240m in the second quarter of 2007. However, this failed to compensate for the Canal Digital Group’s fall from NOK234m to NOK40m due largely to distribution rights for Euro 2008.
As a whole the Telenor Broadcast division reported revenues of NOK2,066m (NOK1,776m).
