Portugal hits 4.1m pay-TV subs in 2019
March 13, 2020
From Branislav Pekic in Rome
Portugal ended 2019 with 4.1 million pay-TV subscribers, a growth of 147,000 or 3.7 per cent in comparison with 2018, according to data published by the National Communications Authority (Anacom).
Subscriber growth was exclusively due to the offers supported by fibre optics (+17.5 per cent), while the other technologies all had a negative performance in 2019: ADSL (-20.2 per cent), satellite/DTH (-6.9 per cent) and cable (-0.7 per cent).
The total number of fibre optic pay-TV customers reached 1.9 million (46.9 per cent of the total), followed by cable TV with around 1.3 million (32.7 per cent), DTH with 464,000 (11.4 per cent) and ADSL with 370,000 (9.1 per cent).
The pay-TV service reached 88 per cent of Portuguese households at the end of 2019 (+2.7 per cent).
NOS is still the market leader in this segment, with a 40.1 per cent share, but is losing ground to Altice Portugal/Meo (39.6 per cent), while Vodafone Portugal was the operator that grew the most (16.3 per cent), while Nowo had 3.9 per cent of the market.
Vodafone and Meo were the providers that, in net terms, captured the most subscribers compared to 2018, with their shares increasing by 1.1 and 0.4 per cent, respectively.
In the same period, NOS share decreased by 1.1 per cent and Nowo’s by 0.4 per cent.