Pay-TV viewing and subscriber numbers continue to grow worldwide, benefiting both cable and telecoms service providers, but the cable companies are pulling ahead, according to recent research. The number of telco based IPTV subscribers surpassed 50 million in 2Q11 while cable companies’ pay-TV subscribership surpassed 100 million, according to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Pay-TV research service.
Cable service providers are also gaining when it comes to voice communications. In aggregate, cable service voice communications subscribers totaled more than 65 million, TeleGeography researchers found.
“Cablecos’ broadband and voice subscriber wins at the expense of telcos far outnumber their pay-TV subscriber losses due to IPTV, and ARPUs for both broadband and voice are more than double that of IPTV,” said TeleGeography’s John Dinsdale. “There are differences by region, but globally, cablecos’ expansion into telecoms markets has had a transformational impact on their growth and financial performance, while the impact of IPTV for telcos has been only marginal.”
