France’s Canal Satellite has already received over 20,000 orders for its new Pilotime service, which uses a next-generation set-top box (STB), even before the start of its nationwide TV advertising campaign last week. It is an impressive start given that the operator hopes to reach 60,000 subs by the end of the year for Pilotime. Laurent de Camas, vice president of marketing for Canal Satellite exclusively told Interspace: “We have also done Direct Mail to subscribers and after three weeks, we have already reached around 20,000 subscriptions to Pilotime before the beginning of the TV campaign. This is a very good result for us.”

Pilotime has an array of features, such as a dual tuner, which enables users to watch and record programmes at the same time. It also gives users the possibility to pause live television and watch it later. The box has an 80 gigabyte hard drive, which is the equivalent of around 40 hours of programming. Users will have to pay 20 euros ($21.6) a month on top of their subscription charges for the service.

Pilotime differs from BSkyB’s Sky+, as the subscriber does not buy the STB. De Camas argues that the rental model is the way forward. “The pay-TV model in France is generally a rental model. You pay a fee each month to rent the decoder. It will be the same for Pilotime. It is 20 euros per month. You rent the decoder. If you have a problem with it, we can change it. You don’t have to buy another STB. The retailer will change the STB immediately. The consumer is very secure with this system. We don’t take any risks.”

The numbers are already starting to take shape. The forecast of 60,000 subscribers by the end of the year already looks conservative. Despite this, De Camas believes that it will be a while before it becomes a mass-market product. “In maybe three years, it will be a mass market product. Firstly, we want to reach the early adopters in the market. I hope and bet the mouth-to-mouth propaganda will be the key to success. In three years, we could reach 15 per cent of our two million subscriber base.”

Canal Satellite’s challenge with Pilotime will to be convince its subscriber base that the advanced features of the box are worth an extra 20 euros a month. While some may be still be sceptical, De Camas expects that the product will ultimately prove a success. “When we launched Canal Satellite, everybody said that French households were not ready to pay for more than one TV service other than Canal+. We reached more than 2 million subscribers seven years later. For Pilotime, it is exactly the same thing. I am sure there are many people sceptical about the product. I think it could increase perhaps faster than Canal Satellite because of the magic of the boxes.”

The product could also help reduce churn. Canal Satellite has one of the lowest churn rates in the industry, at around 8.4 per cent at the end of 2002. De Camas believes the product gives it a key competitive advantage over pay-TV satellite rival, TPS. He says: “The main thing is the dual tuner. It is huge difference to what TPS is offering. TPS has not got this.”

–Mark Holmes