CEE 2011 > The region and its growth prospects
Digital TV Europe June 2011
TVN Group-owned DTH platform ‘n’ had 805,000 active post paid subs and 332,000 prepaid subs at the end of the year and the company reached its goal of generating ARPU of PLN60 (€15) by the end of December 2010. The operator offers the most extensive HD line-up of all the country’s pay TV operators, with a total of 27 channels. Telco TP/Orange had 464,00 DTH sub- scribers at the end of March, after adding 33,000 since the end of the year. Cable operators have been slow to upgrade networks, due partly to fragmentation and also a result of the high costs involved. UPC Polska is the only operator with over one mil- lion subscribers. The Liberty Global-owned operator, which has upgraded most of its net- work, ended March with a total of 1.1 million subs. It is followed by Vectra, which has 773,000 subscribers.
Multimedia Polska is Poland’s third-largest cable operator. It ended 2010 with 699,114 TV subs, and a total of 1,325,870 RGUs. In March, the operator became the first cabler in Poland to launch an OTT service offering TV chan- nels and VOD. Marketed as
mmTV.pl, it offers access to over 1,000 movies and TV channels. Fourth-placed Aster was acquired by Liberty Global in December 2010 for PLN2.4 billion (€600 million), including net debt. The acquisition will increase UPC’s cable market share to around 30%. Aster oper- ates in Warsaw, Krakow and Zielona Gora and by end-2010, had 368,000 subscribers, down from 380,000 a year earlier. Competition from IPTV services has been fairly low and the country was home to just 186,000 IPTV homes at the end of 2010, despite 5.93 million people taking a broad- band subscription.
Expected CEE digital TV penetration, 2011-2015 %
100 2011 2015
Romania 80 60 40 20
The Romanian pay TV market is marked by the fact that the main operators offer a mix of cable and satellite, with some also offering IPTV services. With cable, DTH and IPTV operations, RCS & RDS is the market leader. UPC also has cable and DTH assets (trading as Focus Sat) as does Akta (formerly known as Digital Cable System and Max TV). Already well established as a DTH operator, OTE- backed Romtelecom’s Dolce TV launched its IPTV service in December 2009. The opera- tor increased its TV subscriber base in 2010, surpassing the one million mark in the course of the year. It ended December with 1,053,627 TV customers, up 15% from 911,040 at the end of 2009. According to Romanian regulator ANCOM, the country had 5.73 million pay TV subscribers at mid-2010, down 1.7% from end-2009. This total accounted for 70% of TV households. Cable remains the most popular pay TV option, although the platform lost 1.2% of subscribers in the first half of 2010. The number of DTH subscribers also declined, by 3% and while IPTV experienced growth, it only represents 0.2% of the market. ANCOM reported 3.37 million cable subs at mid-2010, down from 3.41 million at end- 2009. There were only 350,000 digital cable subs at mid-2010 although this figure was up 10.5% in six months. DTH appears to be reaching market saturation, despite the low- cost promotions. Boom TV, one of five DTH operators, felt the strain from market compe- tition, filing for insolvency in May 2010. The company continued to operate, albeit whilst haemorrhaging subscribers, and was recently acquired by telco and DTH operator Romtelecom. There were 2.4 million DTH subs by September 2010, of which 82% belonged to Romtelecom’s Dolce (one mil- lion) or RCS & RDS-owned Digi TV (970,000). UPC Romania ended March with 1.139 mil-
0 Source: Informa Telecoms & Media
lion “customer relationships”, including 304,000 digital cable customers and 235,000 DTH subscribers. In February it was reported that RCS & RDS was close to acquiring UPC Romania from Liberty Global for around US$300 million (€205 million). Should the deal go ahead, RCS & RDS would be by far the leading operator in the market, providing TV services to around four million homes.
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