Belgian cable operator Telenet CEO Duco Sickinghe said there is still room for growth as subscribers increasingly take two or more products. During 2011, ARPU grew 9% to €42.10.
“We added 9% more triple-play subscribers in 2011 to 783,100, now accounting for 36% of our customer base. We further grew our digital TV subscriber base to 64% of our total cable TV customer base and we will continue to work on the conversion of the remaining 789,000 analogue customers to our interactive and much richer digital platform.
“ARPU per unique customer accelerated to 10% in Q4 2011 driven by a growing contribution from Sporting Telenet and the selective price increases on basic cable TV and certain broadband tiers.”
At the end of December 2011, approximately 64% of Telenet’s cable TV subscriber base had upgraded to digital TV. At December 31, 2011, the number of digital TV subscribers reached 1,409,500, up 13% compared to prior year.
177,200 customers subscribed to Telenet pay television sports channels, which represented an increase of 46% year-on-year. The increase is helped by Telenet acquiring live football rights to the Belgian Jupiler (premier) football league.
At the end of 2011, 73% of all set-tops were HD boxes (compared with 64% at the end of 2010), while no less than 82% is a PVR (compared with 77% the prior year).
The number of analogue and digital TV homes totaled 2,198,500 at the end of December 2011, which represents a penetration level of 77% of all homes passed. During the year the cabler recorded a net organic loss of 75,500 basic cable TV subscribers as compared to a net organic loss of 68,000 in 2010. This is mainly due to the heavy competition from Belgacom
Telenet also owns the licence to operate a DTT service in the Dutch speaking part of the country and so far has not started. The company is planning to introduce a DTT offer later this year, but will wait to make any announcements “till a day before we start the service,” according to Sickinghe. He said there will be a service operational sometime during the year.
