The number of pay-TV subscribers in Portugal stood at 4.3 million as of the end of the third quarter.
This, according to the regulator ANACOM, was 133,000 (3.2%) more than a year earlier, the lowest percentage growth since 2017. In Q3, 94.9% of households had pay-TV, 4.5 percentage points more than in the same quarter of the previous year.
The verified growth resulted not only from the growth in the number of accesses, but also from the statistical effect of the decrease in the number of private households (-1.9%).
ANACOM notes that growth was down to FTTH, which registered 295,000 more subscribers compared to the same quarter in 2020 (+14%), reaching 2.4 million subscribers. This growth resulted not only from the capture of new customers, but also from the transfer to FTTH of customers who were previously supported by other networks.
At the end of Q3, FTTH accounted for 55.7% of total subscribers, followed by cable TV (29.7%), DTH (9.6%) and ADSL(5%). Since 2018, FTTH has been the main form of access to pay-TV services.
Meo was the provider with the highest share of pay-TV subscribers (40.6%), followed by Grupo Nos (38.0%), Vodafone (18. 0%) and Nowo (3.3%). In the residential segment, Grupo Nos maintained the highest share (39.1%), followed by Meo (39.0%), Vodafone (18.3%) and Nowo (3.6%).
