Cable TV customers reach 1.31 million - second quarter 2003

The number of cable television service customers reached 1.31 million at the end of the second quarter of this year, reveal data from the Autoridade Nacional de Comunicações (ANACOM). This figure corresponds to an increase of 8.9% over the same period in 2002 and of 0.7% over the previous quarter, equivalent to 107,000 and 9,000 new subscribers, respectively.

The Lisbon region by itself accounts for 51% of all subscribers to these services. However, the highest growth rates were registered in the North region, where in one year's time the number of subscribers grew by 12.5%.

At the end of the second quarter of the year, some 3.42 million households were cabled, for annual growth of 6.9% and quarterly growth of 0.7%, in absolute terms equivalent to the cabling of 221,000 and 23,000 new houses, respectively.

Madeira was the region with the highest quarterly growth rate for cabled households: 1.9%. Lisbon had the highest annual rate: 7.6%. Note that in this latter region, which includes the Setúbal Peninsula, cabled household penetration rates are more than 100%, due to multiple cabling in some of them by more than one cable television services provider.

The figures indicate that by the end of June of this year some 26% of existing Portuguese households had become cable television service customers. This indicator has reached a significant level in the Madeira, a region where 57% of households are customers of this service.

At the end of the second quarter of the year, the total number of subscribers to DTH - Direct to Home - technology (satellite), an alternative to cable infrastructure for television signal distribution, reached 313,000, equivalent to annual and quarterly growth rates of 22.4% and 2.7%, respectively.

Consult:

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