The number of pay-TV subscribers increased by 160,000 in the first quarter in Portugal.
This, according to the regulator ANACOM, was 4% more than in the same period last year and was the highest annual growth in absolute terms since 2016. As of the end of March there were 4.1 million subscribers to pay-TV services in the country.
As of Q1, 89% of households received pay-TV services, or three percentage points more than a year earlier. Growth was largely driven by FTTH, with the number of subscribers in Q1 being 271,000 (+15.9%) more than a year earlier, taking the customer total using the technology to 2 million. All told, fibre accounted for 48% of all subscribers.
The second most used technology was cable, with 1.3 million customers, or 32.2% of the total. DTH accounted for 11.2%, down 4.7% to 462,000, and ADSL 8.5%, down 19.7% to 351,000.
ANACOM notes that the downward trend in DTH slowed down in Q1 – in the same period last year the number of subscribers fell by 9.1% – and may have been influenced by the state of emergency introduced due to the coronavirus. Indeed, one provider gained customers in the first quarter.
Although NOS had the highest share of pay-TV subscribers in Q1, its 39.9% was below 40% for the first time. Meo was in second place with 39.7%, followed by Vodafone (16.5%), Nowo (3.7%).
Vodafone and Meo gained market share on a year earlier (one and 0.3 points respectively) and NOS and Nowo (-0.9 and -0.3 points respectively) saw theirs fall.
