The Dutch terrestrial pay-TV service Digitenne from telecom incumbent KPN now has 735,000 subscribers, having added about 65,000 during the last quarter of 2008. The operator was able to keep momentum after similar growth during Q3.
KPN also says it had reached 40,000 subscribers to its IPTV service KPN Interactieve TV, which it is not marketing actively. The operator has in addition reported 30,000 subscribers to its MobielTV DVB-H offer.
A year ago, the number of DTT subscribers was just under 500,000 – this year KPN hopes to reach one million TV homes. With the current number of homes, KPN claimed to be the second largest digital TV provider in the country surpassing Canal Satelliet Digitaal, but still behind Ziggo, who has over 1 million digital subscribers.
Last week, our premium publication New Television Insider unveiled details of the KPN’s marketing budgets.
With an annual marketing budget of €9.2 million, the DTT platform Digitenne is a strategic investment for the Dutch incumbent telecom operator KPN. Its aim is to stop consumers cancelling their fixed line telephony connection and change to a cable triple play bundle. This sensitive information was leaked by accident in the various reports published by telecoms authority OPTA.
The information, which also stated that the annual marketing budget of KPN’s IPTV service Interactieve TV is €1 million, was included in the public version of the reports, but should have been deleted.
KPN was quick to state that Digitenne is not a loss-leader but just breaking even.
