Zeinal Bava, chairman of PT Multimedia predicts strong growth in the pay-TV market in Portugal. PT Multimedia owns TV Cabo, which is the biggest pay-TV operator in the country with around 1.6 million subscribers. The operator has about 400,000 satellite direct-to-home subscribers and expects to reach 1 million by the end of 2006.

“At present we have 600,000 digital set top boxes,” Bava said. “In the long term we would expect 80 percent of the TV households to have some form of pay-TV service and as such there is a potential to grow this market at least by an additional 500,000 to 800,000 subscribers.”

An interview with Zeinal Bava can be found in the Oct. 31 issue of Satellite News. For more information about subscribing to Access Intelligence’s satellite newsletters, check out our Web site at https://www.satellitetoday.com