Satellite Versus IPTV: The Latest Figures

[Satellite News – [6-6-08] At the end of March, the major telcos in the United States and Europe’s top five markets — the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain and Italy — reported just more than 3.9 million subscribers for their IPTV services, according to industry statistics, and that figure is set to grow rapidly.
France Telecom (Orange) and Verizon in the United States both reported more than 1.2 million subscribers for their IPTV services to lead the way, while some newer services launched by Telecom Italia, Deutsche Telekom and BT showed some early growth.

Telecoms Operators TV Subscribers

Source: Satellite News, Company reports

United States

In the direct-to-home (DTH) market, DirecTV outperformed EchoStar, adding more than 850,000 subscribers in the period that closed March 31 to bring its total to 17 million. This was more than double EchoStar’s 400,000 additions, which gave the operator a total of 13.8 million subscribers. The IPTV threat is growing in the United States, with Verizon and AT&T combining to capture nearly 1.6 million subscribers to date.

U.S. DTH Platform Performance
Source: Satelilte News, Company Reports

Europe

In Europe’s five major markets, the performance of the DTH operators was strong, with only Digital+ in Spain failing to demonstrate much momentum.
BSkyB continues to have very strong growth in United Kingdom, adding nearly 400,000 subscribers. BSkyB also now has nearly 1.5 million broadband customers, which indicates its increasing role in the triple-play market.BT Vision ended the quarter with just less than 215,000 subscribers.
In Germany, Premiere ended the quarter with more than 3.6 million subscribers, adding nearly 160,000 subscribers in the latest quarter. In Spain, Digital+ added 15,000 new customers, the first time in a number of quarters that the operator gained subscribers. In Italy, Sky Italia had a moderate quarter, adding only 70,000 subscribers for a total of 4.5 million subscribers.