They may be two companies operating in two very different countries, but both Netia and TalkTalk are certainly making their presence felt in their respective TV markets.
Earlier this week both reported their latest set of results and they made for interesting reading.
In the UK, TalkTalk now has the fastest growing TV service, beating the likes of Sky and Virgin in subscriber additions. Indeed, buoyed by YouView, it has recently been gaining 12,000 new customers a week, its product being targeted at a mass market interested in taking a minimal pay-TV offer.
In Poland, on the other hand, Netia’s TV base grew by an impressive 48% year-on-year to just over 91,000 as of March 31. Still low compared to other, more established providers of TV services, but the company has a broadband base of nearly 900,000 to market to (TalkTalk, in comparison, ended March with 230,000 TV customers and has a subscriber base of 4 million) and huge growth potential.
Netia expects to gain many more TV customers this year and its confidence is well founded, bearing in mind that it has just completed the acquisition of some former Aster assets, in the cities of Warsaw and Kraków, from UPC Polska.
Given that Aster was at one time Poland’s fourth largest cable operator, these have effectively increased Netia’s reach by 18% to 2.9 million households – more than any company in Poland with the exception of the incumbent TPSA.
Netia has already indicated that it will employ the former Aster’s HFC network to offer DOCSIS 3.0 internet access at 150 Mbps and above. However, its TV services will not use DVB-C but instead its own IP-based technology.
Netia is certainly a company to watch in what is already a pay-TV market close to saturation. While it will never have as many subscribers as Cyfrowy Polsat, UPC Polska and indeed the troubled nc+, like the UK’s TalkTalk it will carve out a niche for itself and become an increasingly important player in its TV market.
