Multimedia Polska sees 400,000 internet subscribers at 2011-end

2012-01-23



Multimedia Polska, the third largest cable TV operator in Poland and internet service provider, announced that the number of its internet service subscribers reached 400,000. The company ended Q3 2011 with 387,000 internet customers, which implies that Multimedia gained 13,000 internet subscribers during the last three months of 2011, expanding its respective subscribers base by 3.4% on a quarterly basis.


As a result of growing popularity (fuelled by the price factor) of bundled offers from telecoms services (double play and triple play) among the operator’s customers, the number of revenue generating units (all sold services) reached 2.04 million in Q3 2011, marking an increase of 6.8% year on year. Also, the number of services per one company’s customer, amounted to 2.04, exceeding the milestone of two services per subscriber for the first time in the Multimedia Polska history. At September-end, the number of triple play users totaled 102,100, and in the case of double play, totaled 239,800. The operator's preliminarily estimates that the latter figure went up to 242,500 during last quarter, 211,700 out of those chose internet as a one of the selected services. Over 60% of Multimedia customers at 2011-end subscribed to internet speeds of 2Mb/s and 6 Mb/s. More and more subscribers are deciding to purchase a full service package.



Fighting for the runner-up locate in the Polish caTV market

Nevertheless, it is the television services segment that remains the key division for the company. The operator is noticing the growing importance of digital television access and IPTV, combined revenues of which grew by 72% year on year during the Q1-Q3 2011 period. Multimedia Polska is the third largest caTV provider in the country by number of subscriptions (with UPC and Vectra holding the first two spots in the respective market, respectively). On 29 November 2011, Multimedia concluded a contract with MNI Telecom regarding the purchase of a 100% stake in Stream Communications (the seventh largest caTV operator in Poland in terms of subscribers). The transaction, whose value of which was raised to PLN 153m (€35.3m) in mid-December, still awaits for the approval from the Polish Office of Competition and Consumer Protection. With a green light for a takeover, Multimedia will have 828,000 customers -- surpassing Vectra in the number of subscriptions.