Friday, August 3, 2007

Does Free have 2.6M IPTV subscribers now?

Free in France announced added 122 thousand broadband subscribers in 2Q07 giving it a total of 2.6 million. It also announced that due to its MPEG-4 deployment all of its broadband subscribers and not just its 2.1 unbundled subscribers can now receive its IPTV service. According to this announcement then, Free now has 2.6 million subscribers capable of using its IPTV service.

According to its release, it was number two after France Telecom's Orange in the number of new ADSL subscribers and ahead of Neuf Cegetel. Orange added 246 thousand subscribers and Neuf Cegetel added 67 thousand. Neuf Cegetel has the second largest broadband subscriber base at 3.0 million.

In the first half of 2007 Free added a subscription video on demand service that includes access to a set of films and TV services for a fixed monthly fee. It also added the TV Perso service that allows its subscriber to broadcast live or pre recorded content to the TV's of other Free subscribers.

Free is continuing to progress well. Its TV service is an important part of its offering. I will clarify what its IPTV subscriber base actually is and create a post when I know something more. Until then, I will use the 2.6 M number cautiously.

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