Cable network operators with fewer TV and more telephony customers
Cable network operators in Switzerland once again lost TV subscribers in the first quarter, but gained more Internet and phone customers. In the industry’s traditional core business—television—they lost 127,000 subscribers over the past year.
This is 4.8 percent less than twelve months ago, as the communications network industry association Suissedigital (formerly: Swisscable) announced in a communiqué on Tuesday. At the end of March, 2.495 million households were still watching TV via cable. By comparison, Swisscom was able to increase the number of TV connections by 166,000 to 1.367 million in the same period. This is an increase of 13.8 percent compared to the end of March last year. Overall, according to estimates by Switzerland's largest telecoms group, the number of TV customers in Switzerland is likely to have increased by 15,000 to 4.504 million since the end of December. This means that the TV market in Switzerland has grown by half a million customers since 2011. On the other hand, cable operators attracted 78,900 new telephony customers in the last twelve months, giving them a total of 774,000 fixed and mobile customers. The lion's share of this was accounted for by traditional fixed-network telephony, which grew by 40,600 to 721,100 customers. Mobile communications, which was only launched in 2014, grew by 38,300 to 52,900 customers. Broadband Internet also increased by 37,400 to 1.217 million customers. (SDA)
| Subscribers | 31.03.2015 | 31.03.2016 | +/- |
| Telephony total | 680'500 | 774'000 | +93,500 (+13.7%) |
| - Thereof mobile telephony | 0 | 52'900 | +52'900 |
| - Thereof fixed network telephony | 680'500 | 721'100 | +40'600 (+6%) |
| Broadband Internet | 1'180'000 | 1'217'400 | +37'400 (+3.2%) |
| => Broadband Internet penetration | 45% | 48.8% | +3.8% |
| Television | 2'622'000 | 2'495'000 | -127'000 (-4.8%) |
