Belgian telecom operator Proximus, formerly Belgacom, has added 35,000 IPTV homes (+8,3%), growing the number of TV customers to 1,795 million during the first quarter.
“We succeeded in growing our customer base further in the first quarter for fixed internet TV and mobile postpaids, leading to a favourable evolution on our market shares. End March 2016, our Fixed Internet market share was 46.2%; for TV, 35.4% and for mobile postpaid 47.2%, thanks to a larger customer base and sound ARPU trends,” said the company’s CEO Dominique Leroy, during an investor’s call.
“We posted a sustained solid revenue increase for these products with fixed data growing by 6.5%, TV by 10.5% and mobile services growing by 1.7%. As this is high quality revenue, this resulted in stronger direct margins. The domestic EBITDA was also supported by the strong focus we keep on improving our cost structure.”
Commenting on the rebranding of competitor Mobistar into Orange, Leroy saud “So, on the Mobistar rebranding, I think it’s quite early to give any indication on that. I think the Orange brand is indeed known more in the south of the country than the north of the country, there is some overflow in terms of TV viewing, we know that’s approximately 30% of TV viewing in the south of Belgium is done on French channels.
“So I think that’s certainly a benefit that Mobistar will get for the rebranding and potentially they could get some more traction on the TV and B2B, but to be very honest, I think it’s very early to give any indication. It will be more a challenge in the north of the country, where the brand is not known and we know that for us the north of the country is quite important, as it is also an area where we’re a challenger.”
(Quotes courtesy of transcripts by Seeking Alpha)
