Growth in Telefonica’s domestic pay-TV business has masked the performance elsewhere in the group, including the Czech IPTV operation O2 TV, which entered negative territory.
O2 TV ended the third quarter with 131,000 subscribers, or 2,000 fewer than three months earlier and 5,000 down on Q3 2009.
As a whole Telefónica O2 Czech Republic saw its ADSL access figure reach 777,000 at the end of Q3, up 11.3% year-on-year, with 20,100 additions in the third quarter.
O2 TV was launched in September 2006 and was initially a resounding success, securing 100,000 subscribers by mid-2008. Since then, its growth has stalled.
Contrast this with the solid performance in Spain where additions of 70,000 customers for the year to date – 26,000 on the quarter – represented a 68.7% increase on the same period in 2009.
The Spanish pay-TV business has 773,000 customers with customers taking both Dúo and Trío packages accounting for almost 90% of the company’s broadband connections at the end of September 2010.
The company has booked a total of €83 million in respect of the Spanish government’s controversial TV tax for he nine-month period.
In Germany, Hansenet took the number of pay-TV connections to 68,000, following its first quarter launch.
