IPTV Market in The Netherlands

While I was in Amsterdam, I met with KPN as well as Versatel to discuss the IPTV market in The Netherlands. My previous post discusses Versatel's offerings and strategies. I also recently did a post discussing KPN's strategies.

The Netherlands is dominated by cable with more than 6 million of its 7 million homes subscribing to the service. The cable service costs 16 euros per month. There are about 1.2 million digital subscribers in The Netherlands.

KPN stated that it believes that it is a battle with cable for each home. It believes that by 2010, 70 percent of homes will choose either a telco or the cable company to provide all voice, data, and video services to the home.

Digital Terrestrial is becoming a significant factor in the Netherlands and accounted for over half of the conversions to digital television in 3Q07. KPN offers a digital terrestrial service for 6.95 euros per month for the first set-top box and 3 euros per month for additional set-top boxes. Its digitial terrestrial offering is generally intended for the TV sets in the home that are not connected to the cable service.

Both KPN and Versatel offer services competitive with cable at 14.95 euros per month. They also share the same football programming, which is produced and broadcast by Versatel and broadcast by KPN as well under license from Versatel.

The IPTV providers in The Netherlands have to overcome strong, established competition from cable providers. It is interesting that KPN and Versatel seem to be cooperating with each other to some degree to establish IPTV. I think this is a smart approach. The more that they can establish an IPTV brand in that country, the more business there will be for both of them.