Brazil expects 2.4m new pay-TV subs this year
June 12, 2013
By Chris Forrester
Last year, Brazil added around 3.4 million new pay-TV subscribers. In 2011 it was nearer 3 million. This year’s total should be around 2.4 million net new subs, says Brazil’s National Telecoms Agency (Anatel), with DTH taking an increasingly large share of the total.
Anatel is basing its projections on the Jan-April subs numbers which saw 200,000 subscribers joining each month, with DTH rising 1.5 per cent, cable rising 0.6 per cent although MMDS continues to lose subs (34 percent of MMDS subs abandoned the technology during the period). Most experts see MMDS being switched off by the end of this year. The end-April MMDS position was just 66,000.
DirecTV’s Sky Brazil saw the greatest growth (80,000 in April) putting it at 5.34 million. But Sky is still in second place behind Claro’s Net/Embratel operation which has 8.78 million subs. Oi is in third place with 857,000 subs. Telefonica follows with 532,000 subs.