At the start of January, Dutch cabler Ziggo launched a campaign to counter local FttH (Fibre to the Home) activities.
The initiative is geared to emphasize the future proof network of Ziggo, delivering high speed internet (up to 120Mbps today), HD television channels and the bestquality telephony, combined with a special offer. The campaign was launched in areas where FttH initiatives are about to set off, and will continue to run throughout 2013.
Continued strong competition in the consumer market kept churn at about the same elevated level as Ziggo experienced in the fourth quarter of 2012. Churn is relatively higher among subscriptions to TV only and the low-tier internet and All-in-1 bundle subscriptions. During Q1, churn for the All-in-1 bundles was 6.2% in total, compared to 5.7% for the previous quarter.
At the end of March 2013, total RGUs in the consumer market reached 6.9 million. In Q1 2013, Ziggo lost 17,000 RGUs as a result of a net churn of 47,000 subscribers and a decline in RGUs for digital pay TV of 21,000, which was partly offset by an increase in RGUs for internet and telephony driven by the growth in subscriptions to the All-in-1 bundle.
The number of subscribers to the All-in-1 bundle grew by 31,000, or 2.2%, to 1.43 million and by 8.3% compared to the prior-year quarter. The number of internet subscribers grew by 21,000 to 1.77 million during the quarter and by 4.3% compared to the prior-year quarter, again increasing our market share for broadband internet.
The number of digital TV subscribers increased slightly by 2,000 to 2.23 million, representing a penetration of 81.8% of its consumer customer base. The number of TV-only subscribers decreased by 20.6%, compared with the same quarter last year, to a total of 902,000 as at March 31, 2013.
The decrease was mainly caused by the upsell of the All-in-1 bundle to the operator’s single and dual play subscribers, and by churn. Churn among TV-only subscribers was higher compared to last year as a result of the market in general moving toward triple-play and increased competition, while churn on all other product lines, for All-in-1 in particular, was significantly lower. Ziggo will continue to focus on upgrading customers to our All-in-1 bundle from a penetration of 52.2% today.
The total number of telephony subscribers rose to 1.50 million at the end of the first quarter, an increase of 7.8% compared to the same period in 2012. This increase is mainly the result of the increase in All-in-1 bundle subscriptions.
On March 15, Ziggo officially introduced the first fully cloud-based interactive DVB-C TV service in the world, as announced in the fourth quarter. By combining the IP protocol with the DVB-C television standard, even set top boxes without built-in hardware functionality for interactivity are now able to utilise interactive services via cable.
Part of this innovation is the migration of the new streaming graphical user interface (SGUI). The user friendly GUI, which is based on HTML5, is streamed to the user over the DVB-C network using a temporary personal connection. This enables customers to access interactive services such as Video on Demand or ‘TV Gemist’ catch-up TV via a simple and basic digital receiver.
The first set top boxes which can be made interactive through this cloud based streaming GUI are a number of Humax and Samsung digital receivers. Ziggo will extend this to include other set top boxes in due course, which will result in an increase in interactive receivers in the installed customer base.
Since the launch of the GUI on March 15, almost 60,000 decoders were activated via this cloud-based solution. As per March 31, Ziggp has over 410,000 customers with an interactive receiver, up from 360,000 at the end of 2012. The growing number of interactive receivers in the installed customer base boosts the growth of VOD services and revenues. During the first quarter we again experienced a strong increase in the number of transactions of over 80% y-o-y, with the penetration of interactive receivers also growing rapidly, but still relatively small compared to the total number of customers.
