Brazil's pay TV subscriber growth drops off in 2Q 2013

According to Brazil’s Agência Nacional de Telecomunicações (Anatel), the country’s pay TV subscriber base ended June 2013 at 16.96 million, with more than 2.4 million new subscribers being added over the preceding 12 months – an annual growth rate of 16.7%. Satellite accounted for over 2 million of the net additions.

In the second quarter, however, only 151.7 thousand new subscribers were added, with satellite adding only 121 thousand. The number of additions has greatly reduced compared with previous quarters. In the second quarter of 2012, Brazil added 860,000 subscribers to its total, and 620,000 were added in the first quarter of 2013.

Pay TV subscribers by technology:

                                                  2012                    2013      Change      Change  
        ----------------------------------------------  ----------------------     2Q 2013     2Q 2013
                1Q          2Q          3Q          4Q          1Q          2Q  v, 1Q 2013  v, 2Q 2012
        ----------  ----------  ----------  ----------  ----------  ----------  ----------  ----------
MMDS       217,729     189,658     163,895     142,113     101,289      33,459     -67,830    -156,199
Cable    5,714,957   5,893,447   6,074,535   6,199,159   6,337,134   6,438,784     101,650     545,337
DTH      7,738,880   8,448,529   9,157,412   9,844,090  10,367,271  10,488,684     121,413   2,040,155
Others       3,841       3,549       3,593       3,595       3,580          66      -3,514      -3,483
        ----------  ----------  ----------  ----------  ----------  ----------  ----------  ----------
Total   13,675,407  14,535,183  15,399,435  16,188,957  16,809,274  16,960,993     151,719   2,425,810