Belgian cable operator Telenet has said it served 2,092,500 homes at the end of December 2013, or 72% of all homes passed.
This represented a net organic loss of 27,300 basic cable TV subscribers for the full year 2013, a sharp improvement compared to last year’s net organic loss rate of 75,800. The cabler lost 900 basic cable TV subscribers during Q4 2013. “We believe this is a solid achievement despite continued competition from other digital platforms,” Telenet said.
Around 71% of Telenet’s basic cable television subscribers were generating incremental ARPU on the interactive digital TV platform, including access to additional thematic content packs, premium movies and sports channels and a VOD library of both local and international programmes. At the end of Q4 2013, 67,000 customers subscribed to “Rex” or “Rio”, two new unlimited subscription VOD packs.
Subscribers to the Telenet Digital TV platform grew 7% year-on-year to 1,491,400 at the end of December 2013. For the full year 2013, the operator attracted over 90,000 net digital TV subscribers, of which 24,800 were added in Q4 2013.
At the end of December 2013, approximately 205,000 customers subscribed to pay television sports channels Sporting Telenet.
Across the footprint of 2,893,800 homes passed, Telenet provided its 2,092,500 unique customers with 4,622,400 services at the end of Q4 2013 (excluding mobile telephony services). These services consisted of 2,092,500 basic cable television, 1,464,900 broadband internet and 1,065,000 fixed telephony subscriptions.
“Telenet can look back at a great operational and financial performance for the whole of 2013. Net new subscriber growth for our advanced fixed products of digital TV, broadband internet and fixed telephony showed a meaningful acceleration in the fourth quarter and was also slightly up compared to the prior year period,” said John Porter, CEO, Telenet.
