Regulator says IPTV is only pay-TV growth driver in Brazil
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Juan Fernandez Gonzalez
| 27 January 2017

The declining Brazilian pay-TV market in 2016 was only buoyed up by growing fibre accesses and increasing IPTV subscriptions.

According to Anatel’s annual analysis, the Brazilian pay-TV market decreased by 1.63% last year, losing over 310,000 subscribers. And the negative trend seems to be continuing as the telecom authority registered almost 83,000 fewer subscribers during the last month of the year.

“Fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) has driven the only growth among pay-TV technologies in 2016,” said the report. “It has grown by 28.47% and added over 50,000 subscribers. It has also been the only technology with a positive variation between November and December, with a 0.51% growth.”

As pointed out before, Oi has led pay-TV growth among operators, mostly thanks to its increasing fibre-based offer. According to Anatel, Oi added 135,000 subs and registered an 11.61% growth during 2016.

The rest of the major operators ended last year with subscriber losses, especially AT&T/SKY - the market’s second largest player with 5.25 million pay-TV households – which saw a loss of almost 200,000 subscribers.

With 9.9 million subs, Brazil’s market is still led by America Móvil (down by 0.5%) and in third position is Telefónica (down 3.75%) with 1.71 million subscribers.

Falling figures have been reported in all telecom services apart from broadband, which closed 2016 with 1.1 million new subscribers to hit 26.59 million connected homes.