Are we witnessing a major shift in the satellite TV market in Central and Eastern Europe?
The news that RCS&RDS has agreed to sell its Digi operation in Slovakia – which, incidentally, includes cable as well as DTH assets – to Slovak Telekom is in itself a major development. It will, after all, strengthen the latter’s position in the local market, where it has provided digital TV services for the past eight years.
It will also bring more pressure to bear on other platforms in Slovakia, though especially Skylink, CS Link and freeSAT.
However, Slovak Telekom is backed by Deutsche Telekom and through the move the latter is making its own position in the CEE region as a whole even stronger. Directly or indirectly, it already has TV interests in several markets including Hungary and Romania.
And what of RCS&RDS? The sale of its Slovak operation is not a one-off, coming only two months after it disposed of its Digi assets in Croatia, selling them to the Telekom Austria subsidiary Vipnet for an undisclosed fee.
RCS&RDS began to enter TV markets outside its home country Romania around 7-8 years ago and at one stage had a presence in a total of six in the CEE region. However, it is now clearly drawing back, with Hungary being the only territory outside Romania that it still appears to have a strong commitment to.
With Deutsche Telekom and now Telekom Austria important players in the CEE satellite TV market, is there anything else we can expect to happen in the near future?
Just a few days ago the local media reported that Serbia Broadband (SBB), whose interests include the DTH platform Total TV, could find itself with a new owner by the end of this year.
SBB has been backed by Mid Europa Partners (MEP) since 2007, during which time it has grown into an important player in the Balkan TV market, and a change of ownership would be a major development were it to happen.
With the Polish platform nc+ making its debut in March and RCS&RDS selling up in two markets, this has already been an eventful year for the satellite TV market in CEE. Much more, including the launch of a Telenor-backed platform in Bulgaria and Orange’s in Romania, is set to happen in the next few months.
