Portugal - Cable and DTH television services with around two million customers in March

Tuesday, May 27th, 2008
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As at the end of March, the services of subscription television which use cable and satellite technologies registered around 2 million users, representing around 18.8 subscribers per 100 inhabitants.

Of these two million users, 75% were customers of the cable distribution service – almost 1.5 million customers – while Direct To Home (DTH) technology had half a million users.

The subscribers represented around 36.2% of households, up one percentage point on the previous quarter.

With respect to the cable television service, in the first quarter, the total number of cabled households for all operators was 4.13 million, 91 thousand more households than in the previous quarter. This is the largest increase, in absolute terms, since December 2002. This jump was however partly due to the revision by ICP-ANACOM of the values given previously for cabled households.

The increases seen reflect, above all, the expansion of the networks of principle operators in the Greater Porto and Lisbon areas.

The Alentejo was the region that saw the biggest percentage increase in the number of cabled households (5.3% over the quarter).

No major changes were seen in the distribution of cabled households by region, with the Lisbon area continuing to have the biggest concentration of available cable accesses (around 43%).

Between January and March, the number of subscribers to the cable television service grew by around 0.5% or by seven thousand subscribers, reaching a total of 1.497 million subscribers. Year-on-year there was an increase of around 4.1%, representing the addition of around 59 thousand new subscribers.

This increase in the number of subscribers is due to the significant growth seen in the North region where 16 thousand new subscribers were recorded in comparison to the first quarter of 2007. This increase in the number of subscribers occurred above all in the zone of Greater Porto, in the Lisbon area and in Alto Alentejo, and was driven by the growth of the largest operators.

Compared to the previous quarter, the number of subscribers fell slightly in the Lisbon region, which continued to have the largest concentration of subscribers, 48.2% of the total.

In the first quarter, cable television service subscribers represented around 27% of all Portuguese households, one percentage point more than in the same quarter of 2007.

The subscriber penetration rate, calculated in terms of cabled households fell to around 39%, as the increase in cabled households outstripped subscriber growth.

Regarding the television distribution service using Direct To Home (DTH) technology, there were half a million subscribers at the end of March, 3.3% more than in the previous quarter and 12.5% more than in the same quarter of 2007. In absolute terms, this translates to 16 thousand more subscribers during the quarter, more than double the number of new cable subscribers.

The North and Centre are the regions that registered the highest growth in absolute terms, with these regions also registering the greatest number of subscribers to this service, both with over 30% of the overall total.