UPC Romania loses analog cable clients, gains on other segments

UPC Romania, the second largest player on the local TV cable market, and part of Liberty Global, has shed approximately 46,500 analog cable subscribers, taking its total to 791,100 in the first quarter of the year.

“As far as analog television is concerned, there has been a reduction in the customer base determined by current economic conditions which led to the erosion of the purchasing power of consumers. This is reflected in the fact that some people have abandoned analog television services while some clients have migrated towards alternative operators, especially at a local level. (…) The unfavorable economic context is directly reflected at national level through the growth in the unemployment rate in March 2010 when the level was 8.36 percent compared to 5.60 percent

in the same month of 2009,” said Pascu.

However, the other services offered by the company have developed more, especially in the digital cable and internet categories. The company’s number of digital cable clients reached 245,000, while in the same period last year it had 147,300 subscribers. It focused on developing digital television services on the wave of the general trend to migrate from analog to digital television.

“Due to our efforts to promote digital television, at the end of the first quarter of the year we registered 245,600 subscribers for digital television services,” said Severina Pascu, CFO of UPC Romania. In Q1, 2010, the operator reached 182,600 clients on the segment of satellite digital television. UPC made progress on the internet segment.

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“In Q1, 2010 we had 10.6 percent more subscribers compared to Q1, 2009, and currently over 271,000 consumers benefit from our internet services,” says Pascu. For voice services, the company reached 153,100, which marks a 16.6 percent growth on the same period last year.

According to the Liberty Global report, the company continues to face major pressure both at competition level and macro-economic level in Romania and Hungary, which affects its rate of growth in Central and Eastern Europe.

Otilia Haraga