Thursday, February 26, 2009

Telefonica Spain Adds 23K IPTV Subscribers in 4Q08

Telefonica added 22,943 IPTV subscribers in Spain in 4Q08 ending the year with 612,494. The company stated that this gives it 14 percent of the pay TV market in Spain. Telefonica's O2 subsidiary in Czechoslovakia added 6,435 IPTV subscribers in 4Q08, ending the year with 114,496 subscribers.



Things have picked up a bit for Telefonica in 4Q08, which makes it one of the IPTV leaders in Europe.

Nielson Publishes 3 Screen Usage Statistics

The Nielson Company has issued its 4Q08 three screen video usage survey for the U.S. This survey shows TV viewing, time shifted TV viewing, Internet usage, Internet video viewing, and mobile TV viewing.

Regular TV viewing dominates in terms of the number of viewers as well as the amount of time spent viewing. The demographic breakdown shows that the age groups above 55 are the most avid viewers of regular TV. The age groups between 18 and 34 watches the most Internet videos. The age groups between 25 and 44 make the most use of mobile video.

This report shows that the new technologies are most used by younger people, but that traditional TV is still very strong. It will be interesting to see how these trends hold as this population ages. I think that these younger groups will continue to use these new technologies, but that there viewing habits will be similar to those of their parents today.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Portugal Telecom Adds 101K TV Subscribers in 4Q08

Portugal Telecom added 101,000 Meo TV subscribers in 4Q08, ending the year with a total of 312,000. This includes both IPTV and satellite customers. Its Meo services offers 110 channels and 1,500 video on demand assets. The company stated that 45 percent of its IPTV customers have used video on demand are buying an average of 2.8 movies per month.

Portugal Telecom has included content from its Internet portal on the Meo TV platform, including news and geo-referenced information, such as traffic, weather and pharmacies onscreen The Meo set-top boxes are all HD ready, using MPEG4.

Portugal Telecom's TV success continues. It again added far more TV subscribers than broadband subscribers.

The company did not state how many IPTV subscribers it has. One of our readers said that IPTV accounts for about 2/3 of the total. This would give a bit more than 200,000 IPTV subscribers.

Friday, February 13, 2009

Cox Traffic Management Strategy

I have made a post on my Telco 2020 blog on Cox Cable's strategy for managing traffic on its broadband network. Its approach makes a lot more sense than the monthly usage caps that other operators are adopting.

FTC Report on Self Regulation of Interactive Advertising

I have posted an article on my Telco 2020 blog on a new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) report on the effectiveness of self regulation for interactive advertising. The report outlines significant issues with self regulation. I think that we will need regulation in this area before long.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

BT Adds 56K IPTV Subscribers in 4Q08

BT added 56,000 BT-Vision IPTV subscribers in 4Q08 giving it a total of 376,000 at the end of the year.

Subscriptions picked up a bit in the quarter. The market in the UK is quite competitive with a strong satellite service leading the pack. BT is facing a problem in delivering competitive HD services due to the relatively low speeds of its broadband services. It has not yet committed strongly to VDSL or FTTH architectures.

Free Up to 2.9 IPTV Capable Subscrbers

Free in France now had 2.9 million unbundled subscribers at the end of 2008, nearly all of who are capable of receiving IPTV programming on their Freebox gateway/set-top box. This is an increase of 534,000 from the end of 2007.

The company did not report on IPTV viewing. I believe that there are about another 150,000 IPTV subscribers that are part of its Alice France Telecom Italia acquisition. In my mind Free has more IPTV viewers than any other provider globally.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Telia Sonera Adds 27K IPTV Subscribers in 4Q08

Telia Sonera added 27,000 subscribers across all of its operations in 4Q08, giving it a total of 477,000 at the end of 2008. The country by country results were:
  • Sweden added 4,000 new IPTV subscribers giving it a total of 324,000 at the end of the year.
  • Norway added no new IPTV subscribers and ended 2008 with 10,000.
  • Denmark added no new IPTV subscribers and ended 2008 with 1,000.
  • Lithuania added 19,000 new IPTV subscribers and ended the year with 67,000.
  • Estonia added 4,000 new IPTV subscribers and ended 2008 with 75,000.
Telia is continuing to experience slow growth in its IPTV services. Only Lithuania is showing strong growth.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Singtel Adds 13K Subscribers in 4Q08

Singtel added 13,000 subscribers to its mio TV IPTV service in 4Q08, ending the year with 59,000 subscribers. The additions in the quarter were driven by promotions and by the mio Home bundle, which includes mio TV, fixed broadband, and a fixed line at a monthly fixed price. SingTel expanded its sports content during the quarter with broadcast rights secured for the Italian Serie A soccer matches.

Singtel got itself out of the doldrums that it experienced in the previous quarters of 2008. Hopefully this trend will continue.

Shanghai IPTV Service

Light Reading has published a video of an interview with BesTV, the joint venture between China Telecom and Shanghai Media that runs the IPTV service in Shanghai. It describes the services, including interactive services, that are available in Shanghai.

This interview discusses the advanced IPTV services that make Shanghai one of the most advanced IPTV offerings in the world. The U.S. and Europe is generally lagging behind Shanghai in terms of interactive TV services.

Monday, February 9, 2009

ATT to Slow U-verse Deployment

The latest DSL Prime email from Dave Burstein stated that ATT will reduce the number of new homes added to the U-verse foot print from 8 to 9 million in 2008 to 4 million per year through 2011.

This looks like a result of the current financial fiasco. ATT's U-verse has been quite successful, I wonder why the company is backing off now. Maybe because it is starting to understand the limits of its VDSL approach compared to Verizon's fiber-based approach.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Digital TV Delayed in the U.S.

The U.S. has delayed the analog sunset from February 16 to June 12. I have also written about this on my Telco 2020 blog.

This will not have much effect on the IPTV or even the Pay TV market in the U.S. Any increase in subscribers due to the analog sunset will be more than matched by losses due to the current recession.

IPTV Penetration in France Reaches 35%

The French telecom regulator ARCEP has posted a report (in French) that the penetration of IPTV services has reached 34.6% of the ADSL lines in the country. It stated that there were 5.643 million IPTV subscribers and 16.299 million ADSL subscribers at the end of the third quarter 2008.

The penetration of IPTV in France is one of the highest. Without rigorously checking, I think it is number two after Hong Kong.