What are the prospects for pay DTT in Central and Eastern Europe?
If the evidence of the Hungarian MinDig TV Extra service is anything to go by, perhaps better than many might think.
Although the region has been slower to roll out digital terrestrial TV than most markets in Western Europe, pay services have been around for some time. Indeed, the first to launch was ZUUMtv in Estonia as far back as December 2006.
While initially a pay-only service, ZUUMtv subsequently added FTA channels to its offer. Today, it consists of 23 pay and five FTA channels and can be received for €6.33 a month.
ZUUMtv is operated by Starman, which is also Estonia’s leading cable operator, and is understood to have seen its take-up grow by 44% in 2010.
Meanwhile in Latvia, the incumbent telco Lattelecom operates a pay DTT service that includes a pre-pay option giving access to premium channels.
In Lithuania, its counterpart TEO LT’s interests include Digital GALA TV, a pay DTT service that had 70,000 subscribers as of the end of this June.
The interesting thing about Hungary’s MinDig TV Extra is that its launch in May last year provided a boost to its sister FTA service MinDig TV. Three months later, the latter was already being received in 100,000 – or 12% of all – terrestrial homes and today the figure stands at close to 250,000.
MinDig TV Extra has itself enjoyed a highly successful 2011 to date and earlier this year was identified by the regulator NMHH as having the fastest growth rate among wireless digital services in Hungary. The addition of more channels to its offer, made possible by the freeing up of a multiplex previously reserved for DVB-H services, can only act as a spur for further growth.
Although it remains to be seen how and when pay DTT services are launched in other CEE markets, they are already part of the TV landscape and undoubtedly here to stay.
