Advanced Television

Fastweb IPTV shuts down Nov 5th

September 10, 2012

From Branislav Pekic in Rome

Italian telecommunications operator Fastweb has officially announced that its IPTV service will close down on November 5th.

In a letter to customers, Fastweb confirmed the news that had been already circulating from this spring, informing fibre optic subscribers they will stop receiving the service already from October 4th.

Fastweb originally launched its IPTV service in 2001, offering access to free-to-air and pay-TV channels as well as VOD. In early 2011, the operator signed an agreement with Sky Italia to offer a “Home Pack” bundle with a selection of satellite TV channels, in combination with Internet and telephony services from Fastweb

However, over the years subscriber figures declined to around 200,000, mainly due to strong competition from DTT (both free-to-air and Mediaset’s Premium pay-TV service) and DTH (Sky Italia).

Sky Italia has already reacted to the development, offering Fastweb’s IPTV customers to switch, by taking the My Sky HD decoder (for pay-TV channels) and Sky Digital Key (for DTT channels).

Categories: Articles, IPTV, OTT