Portugal ended the second quarter with 4,043,000 cable homes, according to data produced by the regulator ANACOM.
Although the figure was 0.8% up on the previous quarter, it was a surprising 5.1% lower than 12 months earlier.
The latter was due to the elimination of duplicate reporting of cable homes following the take-over of Bragatel, Pluricanal Leiria and TVTel by Zon TV Cabo, the country’s leading cable operator.
As of the end of Q2, the Lisbon are had the greatest concentration of cable homes, accounting for 45% of the total.
Meanwhile in the DTH sector, the total number of homes receiving service at the end of Q2 stood at 657,000, or 0.5% more than three months earlier and 10% higher than at the end of Q2 2009.
Strong growth was seen in the take-up of FTTH/FTTB, with the number of subscribers at the end of Q2 being 84,000, as opposed to only 6,000 a year earlier. The vast majority of these (86%) were found in Lisbon and the north of the country.
In total, cable accounted for 54.3% of total TV subscribers, followed by DTH (24.8%), FTTH/FTTB (3.2%) and other technologies (17.7%). Grupo ZON/TV Cabo accounted for 60.8% of all subscribers.