Belgian cable operator Telenet served a total of 1,916,800 basic and enhanced video customers as of March 31, 2019.
On a sequential basis, the operator lost 23,100 net video subscribers during Q1 2019, impacted by the churn in the SFR Benelux footprint, which was acquired by Telenet. The net loss excludes migrations to the cabler’s enhanced video service and represents customers churning to competitors’ platforms, such as other digital television, OTT and satellite providers, or customers terminating their video service or having moved out of our service footprint
In Q1 2019 , Telenet served 2,099,800 unique customer relationships, which represented approximately 63% of the 3,357,100
homes passed by the network across its Flemish and Brussels footprint.
In Q1 2019, Telenet provided 4,818,100 fixed services (“RGUs”) consisting of 1,916,800 video, 1,658,100 broadband internet and 1,243,200 fixed-line telephony subscriptions. In addition, approximately 90% of Telenet’s video subscribers had upgraded to the higher ARPU enhanced video platform at March 31, 2019.
As anticipated, the Q1 2019 net subscriber trend for Telenet’s advanced fixed services of enhanced video, broadband internet and fixed-line telephony continued to be impacted by higher churn in the acquired SFR footprint in Brussels as part of the accelerated customer migration. Excluding this impact, the underlying net subscriber trend across the Telenet footprint would have been better and would have shown a sequential improvement relative to the third and fourth quarter of 2018 on the back of our attractive fixed-term promotions and improved all-in-one converged “WIGO” line-up.
“In Q1 2019, we managed to improve our operational performance as we stepped up commercial activities and migrated all remaining former SFR subscribers to our fully upgraded network in Brussels. Our broadband net adds moved back into positive territory and both enhanced video and fixed-line telephony subscriber trends improved significantly, despite intense competition and continued promotional activity,” commented John Porter, Telenet’s Chief Executive Officer.
“Having fully migrated the SFR subscriber base at the end of the first quarter, we are confident to see a further improvement in our operational performance throughout the
remainder of the year. Our fixed-mobile convergence subscriber base is again showing robust growth, with the net addition of over 29,000 fully converged customers, the best performance since Q1 2018. This resulted in around 20% of our customer relationships being subscribed to either a “WIGO” or “YUGO” bundle versus 15% a year earlier.
Thanks to the continued robust uptake of our FMC bundles and the upgraded standalone Telenet and BASE offers, we recorded strong operational performance in our mobile business as well with almost 33,600 net postpaid subscribers added in the quarter, around double the amount of two previous quarters.
“We reconfirmed our leading position as connected entertainment provider by premiering the final Game of Thrones season. A special dedicated Game Of Thrones pop-up bar was launched in Antwerp, where fans can gather to enjoy the most recent episode of season 8. We also continue to focus on local content with the launch of “Grenslanders” and “Geub”, available exclusively in our “Play” and “Play More” entertainment packages. The “Play” and “Play More” subscriber base increased 9% yoy to almost 434,000 subscribers, underpinning the attractiveness of our content portfolio.
“And to offer our customers an even better and more enriched entertainment experience, we just launched a fully new set-top box with voice control, cloud storage and both Netflix and YouTube integration. The set-top box comes with a new application and website. We are absolutely thrilled with this launch, as it is the most advanced high-tech TV device in Belgium, underpinning our focus of being at the forefront of innovation.”
