During the presentation of the Q1, 2013 figures Belgian cable operator Telenet said that 76% of its connected homes now take digital TV and 42% subscribe to triple play.
The penetration rate is now 73% with 2,106,200 homes connected out of 2,875,100 homes passed. The cabler said its net loss of basic cable TV subscribers remains stable compared to Q4, 2012, with 11,400 homes lost.
Commenting on the loss of basic analogue cable TV homes, the company said in a statement: “We believe this represents a solid achievement given the intensely competitive environment, characterized by the availability of other digital platforms in our market and increased competition mainly from low?end offers.”
At the end of March 2013, the cabler served 1,599,500 digital TV customers (+14% year?on?year) by adding 26,000 net digital TV subscribers over the first three months of 2013.
Telenet now has 1,409,200 homes taking broadband internet services and 987,700 subscribing to fixed telephony services. In addition, 625,000 customers subscribed to mobile telephony services.
The operator has added 21,500 net new subscribers for broadband internet, 19,000 for fixed telephony and 26,000 for digital TV. There are 878,700 triple?play subscribers at the end of March 2013 (+9% year?on?year).
The ARPU per customer relationship amounted to €46.80 for the first three months of 2013, up €2 compared to the prior year period.
At the end of March 2013, 197,300 customers subscribed to Teklnet’s premium sports channels, representing an increase of 8% as compared to the prior year period. Since The operator won the Belgian football broadcasting rights in June 2011, Sporting Telenet subscriber base has increased 59%.
“As only 13% of our cable customers currently subscribe to our mobile products, we believe there is ample growth opportunity ahead. We also remain focused on innovation in our fixed products and are pleased to announce that we successfully started to deploy our next?generation digital TV interface “YeloTV”,” said the company’s new CEO John Porter in a statement.
“Customers will benefit from a totally revamped user interface, new features and seamless media integration with their other digital devices. At the beginning of March, we also launched our completely new over?the?top TV application bringing an identical user experience to the tablet, smartphone and PC. The take up is great: today almost 400,000 unique users also watch TV via our second screen application, and we welcomed over 150,000 new users since the launch of our new app in early March 2013. “YeloTV” is ideally positioned to deliver a solid platform to the broadcasters to grow media consumption and ratings.”
