TNTSat, the French digital terrestrial offer on satellite, reached a total of 2.65 million receivers sold at the end of 2010. 800,000 additional receivers were sold during 2010.
The TNTSat offer was launched in March 2007. “The continued strong growth of TNTSat is driven by digitalisation and the analogue switch-off in more and more French regions,” says Ferdinand Kayser, president and CEO of SES ASTRA, in a statement. “With 14 French regions shifting to purely digital reception in 2011, we expect the growth of TNTSat to continue with strong momentum.”
With TNTSat, viewers are able to receive the full French digital terrestrial offer: the 19 French free-to-air channels, the 24 regional channels of France 3, as well as four channels in HD. In order to receive these programmes, households need a satellite dish pointed to the Astra orbital position 19.2 degrees East and a TNTSat receiver.
TNTSat has a range of 54 receiver models, 23 of them for HD. TNTSat does not require a subscription, nor a decoder rental fee. Most of the receivers are labeled “Canal Ready” which means that they are able to receive the offer from Canal+ and CanalSat by buying one or more subscription packages and replacing the receiver’s smart card.
Just last week, Eutelsat has announced that its Fransat subsidiary shipped over 800,000 set-top-boxes to receive digital terrestrial TV (DTT) channels by satellite via the Fransat platform. TNTSat and Fransat are two competing offers on two different satellites, but basically offer the same service.
