Belgian incumbent telecom operator Belgacom said that is has added 223,000 new Belgacom TV customers, leading to a total customer base of 975,000 at the end of 2010.
The operator said it was extremely successful with its packs including “Free TV”, which continued to attract many customers, driving the total of set-top boxes rented or sold by year-end to 975,000, representing 839,000 households opting for Belgacom’s TV offer. This led to a share of 18% of the total Belgian TV market, and a 32% share of the digital TV market. At the same time, for Belgacom’s consumer segment, the TV penetration reached about 60% of its internet customers.
Belgacom said it intends to further uplift the TV platform to an “Entertainment” platform through a number of strategic partnerships. In May 2010, it announced an exclusive partnership with OnLive to expand its services in areas such as interactive entertainment, cloud computing and online gaming. This was followed in September by the announcement of a partnership with in3Depth Systems, a Belgian company with an expertise in 3D-gesture recognition technologies, which could be applied to a wide range of Belgacom Entertainment content, from video games to e-learning applications.
Furthermore, Belgacom concluded a transaction with Jinni, an Israeli company, with a service providing a personalised search-and-recommendation engine for movies and television shows. Belgacom also announced a strategic partnership with blinkx, a video search engine, to power TV and video search across Belgacom’s new entertainment platform.
Belgacom also wants to expand its 3DTV offer. Today, Belgacom’s TV-offer includes a “3D-demo” channel as well as a selection of 3D-movies.
