2021 is turning out to be a significant year for Orange and its pay-TV business in Slovakia.
Earlier this week, aside from the introduction of a new Android 4K set-top box, it was reported by the local media that the company plans to launch a new DTH platform in cooperation with Canal+. This will follow the closure of its own service, which is distributed by Eutelsat 16A at 16 degrees East, sometime this autumn. Earlier this summer Orange also closed its proprietary sports channels and shortly afterwards it lost the broadcasting rights to the Premier League, which from the 2022-23 season, for a period of three years, will be held by Canal+.
Orange, alongside Slovak Telekom, M7 Group, Digi, UPC and Antik Telecom, is currently one of the leading players in Slovakia’s pay-TV industry and had 148,000 subscribers to its services as of the end of June, or 26,000 more than a year earlier. Ahead of the closure of its current DTH service, it plans to migrate as many of the latter’s subscribers to its IPTV operation, with those unable to receive it being encouraged to opt for the new DTH platform.
Although Orange will provide details of the new platform at a later date, it has already said it will have richer content and more functionalities for customers than the current service.
Canal+ is already present in the Slovak market through M7 Group, which operates the DTH platforms Skylink and freeSAT. M7 Group is in fact becoming an increasingly important player in both Slovakia and indeed Hungary, Romania and the Czech Republic. Thanks to Canal+, it is now able to provide operators with high-quality content – its so-called ‘TV Brick’ solution – and this will probably also be the case for Orange’s new DTH platform.
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