Klick - TELE-satellite International Magazine

NEWS
E U R O P E
BELGIUM
IPTV & Cable
Edited by
Branislav Pekic
BELGACOM TOPS 663,000
IPTV SUBSCRIBERS
Belgacom added 75,000 customers for its IPTV
service Belgacom TV in the third quarter of this
year to reach 663,000 customers by the end of
the period, with the company citing the launch
of a multi-play pack as one of the reasons for
this solid growth. TV ARPU per household
went up slightly to €20.60 in the third quarter of
2009, while revenue from IPTV services rose
51.2% year-on-year to reach €94 million.
BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
BH TELECOM OPTS FOR
ENVIVIO IPTV SOLUTION
BH Telecom has selected Envivio IPTV Headend
solution, integrated by Smart Com, for its new
IPTV service. The Bosnian triple-play provider
has already begun the rollout of its new Moja
TV IPTV service. Envivio officials said that
the deployment will help BH Telecom to offer
a full suite of live and on-demand channels
complete with EPG, PVR and other interactive
features to its more than 2 million subscribers.
CROATIA
T-HT WITH 190,000 SUBSCRIBERS
Croatia’s dominant fixed line provider T-
Hrvatski Telekom (T-HT) has reported that
its total ADSL broadband subscriber lines in
service increased by 22.7% year-on-year to
reach 527,000 at the end of September 2009,
whilst its MAXtv IPTV service reached 190,000
subscribers at the same date, up from 92,000
a year earlier. IP-based revenue rose 30.1%
year-on-year in the first nine months of 2009.
FRANCE
FRANCE TELECOM WITH 2.45
MILLION PAY-TV SUBSCRIBERS
France Telecom/Orange reached reached
2.547 million French subscribers to its pay-TV
services (delivered via IPTV and DTH) by the
end of September, up 59% year-on-year, with
the Orange sport and cinema series channels
having a total of 596,000 subscribers,
compared to 130,000 at the end of 2008.
TF1 LAUNCHES CATCH-UP
SERVICE ON BBOX
TF1 has launched its catch-up TV service MyTF1
on the IPTV service of Bouygues Telecom, with
other IPTV providers expected to follow shortly.
The service also gives access to the broadcaster’s
VOD platform TF1 Vision, as well as games, polls,
voting and other interactive features. Around
3,000 programmes are being available on-demand
and for free, with catch-up programmes available
for seven days after broadcast. Bouygues
Telcom is thought to currently have around
170,000 subscribers for its IPTV service.
GEORGIA
UNITED TELECOM LAUNCHES IPTV SERVICE
United Telecom of Georgia launched an IPTV
service in the capital Tbilisi in October 2009 in
partnership with Novus Group. United Telecom
plans to invest a further USD 2-3 million in the
development of the service, on top of an original
investment of USD 1.5 million. The service is
expected to be expanded nationwide in the first
quarter of 2010. Packages are priced between
USD 15 and USD 35, with customers able to
subscribe to a triple-play United package.
GERMANY
SWISSCOM DEPLOYS IPTV AT
HILTON FRANKFURT
Swisscom has installed its convergent IPTV
and Internet solution at the Hilton Frankfurt.
The solution delivers HD live-TV and VOD plus
Internet access through the hotel’s telephone
system. Thanks to the pioneering use of VDSL
technology for hotel IPTV solutions, hotel guests
benefit from wired and wireless Internet access,
digital TV with more than 70 channels from
all over the world, an extensive library of new
SD/HD blockbusters and a series of innovative
short documentaries in HD quality. Swisscom
IPTV has been deployed in nearly 5’000
guest rooms since its market launch in 2009.
GREECE
OTE CLOSE TO IPTV COVERAGE TARGET
‘Conn-x TV’, the IPTV service provided by OTE,
now covers 53 cities after the operator recently
expanded its footprint by nine additional areas:
Arta, Zakynthos, Karditsa, Lamia, Lefkada,
Messologgi, Mykonos, Naousa and Paros. OTE
aims to offer Conn-x TV to all major cities and
prefecture capitals in Greece by the end of 2009.
LATVIA
LATTELECOM TOP DIGITAL TV PROVIDER
Lattelecom has become the largest provider
of digital TV services in the country with
a customer base of over 40,000 subscribers
for its IPTV service Interactive TV. The
service includes HD content, VOD, archived
programmes and PVR capabilities.
LITHUANIA
TEO WITH 50,000 IPTV SUBSCRIBERS
Teo reached 51,239 subscribers for its IPTV
service Interactive Gala TV by the end of the third
quarter of this year, adding 3,339 customers in
the three-month period. During the twelve months
to the end of September, the company doubled
its TV customers to reach 91,700 subscribers.
THE NETHERLANDS
KPN LAUNCHES HD CHANNELS ON IPTV
KPN has boosted its IPTV Interactieve TV
service with the introduction of HD channels.
The IPTV service currently has 70,000
subscribers, compared with 854,000 for its
digital TV platform, Digitenne. To support
the expansion of its IPTV service, KPN is
upgrading its copper network to VDSL2.
POLAND
FRANCE TELECOM/ORANGE
IPTV SUBSCRIBERS UP 88%
France Telecom/Orange saw its pay-TV base
(served by IPTV and DTH) more than double in the
first nine months of this year to reach 283,000 subscribers,
having sold 132,000 DTH subscriptions
in the period, while its IPTV customer base was
up 88% year-on-year by the end of September.
110 TELE-satellite — Global Digital TV Magazine — 02-03/2010 — www.TELE-satellite.com
PORTUGAL
PORTUGAL TELECOM TOPS
500,000 PAY-TV CLIENTS
Portugal Telecom’s Meo pay-TV service has
surpassed the 500,000 clients mark, about
double the client base it had last year and
with 57,000 customers added since mid-2009.
Meo offers triple-play services, including TV,
broadband Internet and fixed-line phones.
ROMANIA
ROMTELECOM LAUNCHES IPTV IN 9 CITIES
Romtelecom has launched, in Bucharest,
Cluj, Iasi and another 7 big cities, TV services
through the same lines it provides fixed telephony
and Internet services, opening a new
front in its battle with RCS&RDS and UPC.
The IPTV service costs RON 15 per month
and clients will not pay until March 2010.
SCANDINAVIA
TELIASONERA ADDS 109,000
IPTV SUBSCRIBERS
TeliaSonera added 109,000 subscribers to its TV
services across all markets in the third quarter
of this year to bring the total to 739,000 customers,
of which 561,000 were IPTV subscribers.
Over 20% of its broadband customers (across
all markets) were reported to subscribe to its
IPTV services, available in Sweden, Norway,
Denmark, Lithuania and Estonia. The total
number of IPTV subscribers across all markets
increased by 29,000 in the third quarter of this
year, of which 17,000 were added in Sweden.
SPAIN
TELEFONICA ADDS GRASS
VALLEY ENCODERS
Telefonica recently added the latest Grass Valley
ViBE EM2000 MPEG SD encoders to its IPTV
head end. The EM2000 based on the customerdesigned
Grass Valley Mustang compression
engine, and uses unprecedented processing
power to deliver MPEG-4 compression of standard
definition television signals in smaller bandwidths
with superior picture quality. Grass Valley
provided the complete head end for Telefonica’s
IPTV service in a turnkey contract in 2006.
UKRAINE
VOLIA TO LAUNCH IPTV IN
SECOND HALF OF 2010
Cable operator Volia has confirmed that it plans to
launch IPTV services in the second half of 2010.
The company added that it estimates 15% of its
broadband customers and 7% of its existing television
customers are interested in receiving IPTV.
UNITED KINGDOM
BT VISION TO MISS 2010
SUBSCRIBER TARGET
The chief executive of BT Vision has conceded
that the service is unlikely to achieve previously
announced subscriber targets. Marc Watson
said that BT Vision will not meet the two to three
million subscribers by end-2010 that BT Group
chief executive Ian Livingstone set in April 2008.
BT Vision ended the second quarter of 2009 with
436,000 subscribers. BT is expected to begin a
marketing offensive at the beginning of 2010 that
will place BT Vision at the centre of a triple-play
TV, telephony and broadband internet offer.
CANVAS IPTV OPEN STANDARD
TO COST £115.6 MILLION