Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Fastweb adds 31.4K IPTV Subscribers in 1Q08

Fastweb added 31.4 thousand IPTV subscribers in 1Q08, which is an increase of 77 percent over the 17.7 thousand IPTV subscribers that it added in 1Q07. It did not announce its total number of IPTV subscribers.

Fastweb credits its increased sales in 4Q07 and 1Q08 to its introduction of a TV only service that does not require a broadband data or VoIP service. It has found that the churn rate of its IPTV subscribers is 24 percent lower than its overall customer base.

Fastweb seems to have breathed new life into its IPTV service with its single play IPTV service.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Bob,

Since September 2007, I think Fastweb has been offering cable TV (confusingly called IPTV 2.0). This couldn't be classified as an IPTV service since IPTV 2.0 is delivered via HFC network. It might be worth looking at company presentations and articles to verify if such is the case.

Bob Larribeau said...

Interesting, I have interpreeted this announcement to mean that FastWeb introduced a 1P TV only broadband service in September 2007. Previously you had to have a broadband data service before you could subscribe to the TV service. This is how the quarterly presentations referred to it. As far as I know there are no cable networks in Italy. Telecom Italy abandoned its own HFC network build out more than ten years ago.

You can find the press release in Italian at http://company.fastweb.it/index.php?sid=19&idc=1213.


I have asked FastWeb to clarify. Anybody else out there who has direct knowledge (or who can read Italian) should also comment.

Thanks,

Bob Larribeau

Bob Larribeau said...

I received a response from FsstWeb on this question. It confirmed that all of its IPTV services are based on its ADSL and FTTH networks. Its TV service is an IPTV service and is not a cable HFC based service.

FastWeb went on to say that there is no cable TV in Italy and therefore in September, when it decided to deliver this service, it used the term “TV via cavo” (TV via cable) to explain the concept of IPTV to the layperson.

FastWeb also said that my methodology for estimating their IPTV subscriber counts is a bit haywire. We will talk about it next week after I get back from NXTcomm.

Bob Larribeau