Unitymedia continues to grow its Unity3Play triple play retail offer, using digital TV pay services, broadband internet and telephony to compensate for the loss of basic subscribers.
“We think it’s a very robust set of numbers.” Parm Sandhu, Chief Executive Officer, Unitymedia told Broadband TV News. “The performance has underlined the success of our business model and how we’re driving triple play growth.” He said the company was particularly pleased with the success its broadband offer against DSL competitors. “More and more we are attracting customers to switch from DSL to cable and we are targeting our advertising towards that. Customers are coming out of their offers and getting a much better offer from Unitymedia in terms of speed, and price, and customer service.”
The number of digital TV pay RGUs has increased year on year by 101,000 to 531,000, as of September 30, 2008. Internet customers have also increased by 283,000 to 519,000 year on year, the company benefitting from applying a single brand across its customer footprint. Telephony RGUs increased from 134,000 as of September 30, 2007 to 308,000 at September 30, 2008.
Unitymedia is attributing the 189,000 fall in basic analogue subscribers, to 4,655,000, to price increases applied to both single user and multi-dwelling unit customers in January and July respectively. However total cable revenues were up 18% to €185.9 million year on year and at the end of the quarter 24% were receiving a digital service.