Pay-TV subscriptions in Portugal reached 3.67 million at the end 2016, representing a rise of 4.1% to 145,000, compared to the end of 2015. Portugal’s National Communications Authority, Anacom, stated that the penetration rate for the service was 90%, which is up 3.6% compared to the previous year.
Main contributing factor for the growth was the FTTH/B technology, which rose 28.6% and registered 235,000 additional access points, taking the total to 1.05 million. At the end of 2016, FTTH/B accounted for 28.8% of the total pay-TV subscriptions, representing a rise of 5.5% compared to the end of 2015.
Cable TV distribution remains the most popular form of pay-TV in Portugal, with 36.7% of the total, representing 1.34 million subscriptions. Broadband saw a fall in market share by 9.5% to 678,000 subscribers, which was the lowest figure since the end of 2013. DTH accounted for just 16.1% and saw a drop of 3% with a loss of 591,000 subscribers.
Around 90.4% per cent of pay-TV subscribers had the service as part of a package. It is estimated that 79.7% of subscribers had access to over 80 standard TV channels, with 15.3% subscribing to premium channels, but subscriptions were down 3.3%.
Stand-alone or bundled revenues from the pay-TV services, amounted to $1.9 billion in 2016, representing a rise of 8.5% compared to 2015.
The major player is still the NOS Group with 43.5% share of pay-TV subscriptions, although this was a drop of 0.2% over the year. Portugal Telecom’s Meo’s share was 38.9%, down 1.7%, Vodafone’s share was 12.8%, and Nowo’s share was 4.7%. Vodafone was the only operator to increase market share, and was up 2.3%.
