Pay TV subscribers in Portugal up 116,000 in 3Q 2017

ANACOM (Autoridade Nacional de Comunicações): Subscription TV in Portugal gains 116 thousand new customers

At the end of 3rd quarter 2017, there were around 3.8 million subscribers to the subscription television signal distribution service in Portugal, an increase of 33 thousand subscribers from the previous quarter and an increase of 116 thousand subscribers versus the same period of 2016 (growth of 3.2%). In this period, 92 out of 100 private households had the service.

Grupo NOS reported the highest share of subscribers (43%), followed by MEO (38.1%), Vodafone (14%) and NOWO (4.7%). In net terms, Vodafone was the provider that added the largest number of subscribers in the quarter.

The growth reported in the number of subscribers to the subscription television service was mainly due to offers based on optical fibre ((FTTH/B). There was a 27.3% increase in the number of optical fibre subscribers, representing 269 thousand new customers. These figures make optical fibre the second most used subscription television technology, accounting for 33.4% of total subscribers to the service. Cable continues to be the principal support technology for the subscription television service, used by 36.1% of total subscribers, while xDSL was used by 15.7% of subscribers and DTH by 14.8% of subscribers.

It is estimated that 93.6% of subscription television service subscribers contract the service as part of a bundle. The number of subscribers receiving the subscription television service as part of a bundle increased by 8.2% year-on-year.

In the third quarter, total revenues from the subscription television signal distribution service (stand-alone and bundles comprising this service) totalled around 1.4 million euros (an increase of 4.7% over the same period of 2016).

Meanwhile, about 15.5% of homes with the subscription television signal distribution service had access to premium channels (a decrease of 0.7 percentage points over the same period of 2016), while 75.3% had more than 100 channels.

Use of the features of the subscription television signal distribution service declined by 2.3 percentage points over the quarter, with about 73 percent of subscribers reported as using at least one of the features available. Automatic recordings were the most commonly used service, followed by the TV programme guide, channels in high definition and manual recordings.

It should be noted that, in the 3rd quarter, about 5.5% of individuals aged 10 years or over subscribed to streaming-on-demand services (Netflix, Fox Play, Nplay or Amazon Prime Video), increasing by 2.3 percentage points from the same period of 2016.