Portugal ended 2020 with a pay-TV penetration rate of 93.2%, or 5.4 pp more than a year earlier.
According to data published by the regulator ANACOM, the total number of subscribers reached 4.2 million, or 163,000 (+4%) more than 12 months earlier.
ANACOM notes it was not possible to identify any statistical effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and the migration process of digital terrestrial television (DTT) on the evolution of the number of pay-TV subscribers.
Growth was principally due to FTTH, which gained an additional 276,000 (+14.4%) subscribers in 2020 to reach a total of 2.2 million. FTTH accounted for the most pay-TV connections (51.6%), followed by cable TV (31.1%), DTH (10.6%) and ADSL (6.8%).
Meo led in terms of subscriber numbers (40%), followed by Grupo Nos (39%), Vodafone (17.3%) and Nowo (3.5 %).
In the residential segment, Grupo Nos maintained the highest share (39.8%), followed by Meo (38.6%), Vodafone (17.6%) and Nowo (3.9%).
Vodafone and Meo saw their subscriber totals increase by 1.1 and 0.4 pp respectively in 2020, while Grupo NOS (-1.1pp) and Nowo (-0.4pp) saw theirs fall.