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Telco-TV growth is fast here, faster overseas
June 2, 2009
The phone company is no longer just the phone company, in any language.
The number of subscribers to television services offered by telecommunications services, which is expected to outpace cable-TV and satellite growth in the U.S., will grow even faster overseas as countries update their infrastructure to accommodate broadband technology, according to at least one report.
Global telco-TV customers will total about 47 million households by the end of 2011, marking a 29% annual growth rate, ABI Research said in a report yesterday. In the Asia-Pacific region, the annual growth rate will be 37%, according to ABI.
"Massive countries such as China and India are still very much inhibited by the lack of sufficiently broad bandwidth but they are expected to be high growth markets in the years to come," said ABI Research industry analyst Serene Fong, in a statement. South Korea, Hong Kong and France were already showing substantial growth rates in telco-TV customers by the end of last year, according to Fong.
Such growth echoes what already appears to be taking place in the U.S. In April, Verizon said the number of subscribers to its FiOS service rose 16% during the first quarter, while AT&T had a 28% jump in subscribers to its U-verse service. Combined, the 3.5 million customers of the two services were a fraction of the 24 million people who subscriber to U.S. cable-TV leader Comcast.
Still, between now and 2013, the number of U.S. telco-video subscribers will jump fivefold to more than 11 million by 2013, SNL Kagan said last year, while the number of U.S. cable subscribers will be little changed.
Posted by Danny King on June 2, 2009 | Comments (0)
