Swisscom - More than 20,000 orders for Bluewin TV

Wednesday, January 10th, 2007
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Only two months after market launch, more than 20,000 customers have signed up for Bluewin TV. The new television offering has already been successfully installed in over 10,000 households. Swisscom Fixnet is working around the clock to deal with the backlog of orders and is now increasing its installation capacities.

With over 20,000 orders by the end of December 2006, Swisscom greatly exceeded its original target. As of this date, the IPTV service had been activated in over 10,000 households.

Installation capacity to be increased

Extreme demand has unfortunately led to waiting times for installation of up to six weeks. Installations are currently running at over 1,500 a week. Dates are agreed individually with the customer. Swisscom is looking to further improve its processes so that Bluewin TV can be delivered to new customers within three to four weeks.

To increase capacity, installations are also being carried out on Saturdays. Swisscom is working with partner companies to carry out the installations: a further 100 technicians are to be added to the current team of 300-plus technicians. Ensuring the availability of routers also has to be addressed. Delivery bottlenecks may be encountered in some parts of French-speaking Switzerland.

Positive market response – focus on residential customers

Bluewin TV has been well received by customers, who appreciate, above all, the attractive content and the fact that the service is easy to use. Related market players such as retailers have also responded very positively. Distribution is to be stepped up gradually but for the time being Swisscom is focusing its efforts on market launch in the residential customer segment. The company is deferring installations for interested distribution partners and their distribution networks to the second half of 2007.

With 100-plus television channels , 70-plus radio channels, 500-plus top films (on demand), live sports coverage and up to 30 Teleclub channels, Swisscom’s Bluewin TV has a broad appeal.