Portuguese cable TV slow growth
September 15, 2008
From Branislav Pekic in Rome
At the end of the second quarter, the number of cable TV subscribers in Portugal totalled 1.5 million, representing a 2.9% At the end of the second quarter, the number of cable TV subscribers in Portugal totalled 1.5 million, representing a 2.9% growth on the previous year, only 42,000 new subscribers were added.
The total number of pay-TV subscribers in the period reached 2.1 million or 20% of the population. Cable TV has around 70% of the total subscribers, followed by DTH with 24.5% while other technologies (IPTV and FWA) are responible for the remaining 5.5%.
In the period the Zon group (Zon Multimédia, Zon Açores and Zon TV Cabo Madeirense) had 74.3% share of subscribers, followed by Cabovisão (14%), PTC (5.4%), TVTel (3.4%) and other operators (2.9%).
The number of cabled households arrived to 4.21 million at the end of June, 75,000 more than in the prevous quarter and 281,000 more than in the same period last year. For its part, DTH currently has 525,000 subcribers or 26,000 more than in the previous quarter (+5.1%) and 80,000 more (+18%) than at the end of the second quarter of 2007.