Cable TV customers reach 1.28 million - first quarter of 2003

The number of cable television service customers rose to 1.28 million at the end of the first quarter of this year, indicate data from the Autoridade Nacional de Comunicações (ANACOM). This figure corresponds to an increase of 10.4% over the same period in 2002 and of 1.3% over the previous quarter, equivalent to 121,000 and 16,000 new subscribers, respectively.

The Lisbon region accounts by itself for more than half the customers, with 52% of the total. But the region with the biggest increase in customers in the last 12 months, 18.8%, was the Alentejo and Algarve, where there was nevertheless a 1.5% drop in the number of service subscribers between the last quarter of 2002 and the first one of 2003.

At the end of the first quarter of 2003 some 3.4 million households were cabled, 9% and 1% more than in the year-on-year and previous quarters, respectively. The Alentejo and Algarve region once again led in annual growth, with an increase in the number of cabled houses on the order of 15.6%, or 39,000 houses, during the period in question.

In the Lisbon region, including the Setúbal Peninsula counties, the percentage of cabled houses is over 100%, due to the practice of multiple cabling of same by more than one cable television operator.

By 31 March of this year 25% of all households in Portugal had become customers of cable television services. The highest penetration rate, 51%, was in the Lisbon region, followed by the two autonomous island regions, where in both the penetration rates reached 48%.

The percentage of household customers of cable television service rose to 38% throughout the country, when only cabled houses are considered. In this case, the penetration rate leadership rests with the Azores and Madeira, where  67% of cabled houses are effectively service customers.

At the end of the first quarter of the year, the total number of subscribers to DTH - Direct to Home (satellite) technology, an alternative to cable infrastructure for TV signal distribution, reached 306,000, equivalent to annual and quarterly increases of 28% and 6%, respectively.

Regarding the distribution of DTH subscribers, and as in previous quarters, the North region accounts for the most  subscribers vis-à-vis the total, representing 33% of the national total.

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