ONO debuts HDTV, loses subs
July 29, 2011
From David Del Valle in Madrid
Spain’s largest cable company ONO is set to launch its first HDTV service in August 2011with an offer of up to ten HDTV channels: Mediapro’s Gol TV, News Corp’s Fox, Sony’s AXN and Sony TV, Viacom’s MTV Live HD, Spain’s national public broadcaster TVE HD, Grupo Planeta’s national private broadcaster Antena 3, Mediaset Espana’s Telecinco HD and Mediapro’s laSexta HD. Viewers in the Catalonia region will also be able to receive the public channel TV3 HD.
The company will make new STBs available with PVR capabilities through TiVo’s technology. Up to June 30, ONO had 952,000 pay-TV clients, down 0.7 per cent (some 7,000 clients) in comparison with March this year. As a whole, the operator saw a drop of 7,000 clients in the first half of the ear, but with an EBITDA increasing by 4 per cent to €366 million. Net profit until June reached €31 million, up 9.8 per cent, with revenues reaching €733 million, around 79 per cent of the total from the residential market. ARPU grew by 1 per cent to €51.5 against €51 in March this year.
Overall, ONO has 1,912,000 residential clients, with Internet subscribers rising to 1,414,000, around 19 per cent of them with high-speed Internet access (30 Mbps and 50 Mbps).