BELGRADE (Serbia), July 3 (SeeNews) – The number of IPTV subscribers in Serbia rose 37% to 118,000 in 2011, the country’s telecoms regulator, RATEL, said.
“Having this and the number of potential IPTV subscribers of around 3.0 million in mind, a change in the overall picture of the media content distribution market can be expected in the coming period,” RATEL said in an overview of telecom market in Serbia in 2011.
In 2011, there were 76 cable TV (CATV) operators in Serbia as well as three IPTV carriers and as many direct-to-home (DTH) operators.
The total revenues from media contents distribution increased by 16% year-on-year to approximately 10.3 billion dinars ($112.8 million/89.6 million euro) last year, RATEL said.
In 2011, the share of IPTV in total revenues was 22%, up from 4.0% a year earlier. DTH saw its share drop to 8.0% from 21% while CATV had a 70% share.
The country's biggest media content distribution operator was once again Serbia Broadband with a market share of over 50% in terms of both number of subscribers and revenues. Its main competitors are PTT, Kopernikus Technology, Telekom Srbija, I.KOM, Digi SAT and Radijus Vektor.
According to data submitted to RATEL by the operators, there were over 1.0 million subscribers of media content distribution via cable distribution networks, which is a growth of over 14% compared with 2010. Analogue CATV subscribers are still dominant among the total CATV subscribers with 89%.
DTH subscribers rose to 210,000 from 208,000 in 2010.
Serbia has a population of 7.3 million.
(1 euro=114.9577 Serbian dinars)