Digital TV and cable gain ground in Romania

Take up of digital cable services is on the rise in Romania, according to the country's communications authority ANCOM. There were 3.3 million subscribers to digital television services on June 30 this year – a 16 percent increase on the same date in 2011, according to ANCOM. Digital TV services currently cover half of the market, with the rest being cable TV. Increases in cable subscriptions are outpacing satellite services, “In one year, the number of subscribers to digital cable networks registered a significant rise, by 49 percent, exceeding 1 million, whereas the number of DTH [satellite] subscribers grew by almost 5 percent to 2.21 million,” said the ANCOM President Catalin Marinescu. The penetration rate of subscription based audiovisual retransmission service (subscription television) increased to 83.5 percent of households. Meanwhile, the penetration rate for cable services rose to 51.8 percent. In total 449 providers were responsible for the services. There are marked differences between urban and rural areas. Overall, 60 percent of subscriptions are in urban areas, where cable is far more dominant than satellite with 79 percent of service subscribers. In rural areas the picture is different, there the majority of subscriptions – 64 percent – are via satellite. The total number of subscribers to television services was 5.92 million in June 2012 – an increase of 2.9 percent over end-2011 and by 5.2 percent compared to June 30 2011. The number of cable subscribers grew by 2.7 percent to 3.67 million, whereas the number of satellite (DTH) subscribers rose by 3 percent to 2.21 million in the first six months of 2012. editor@romania-insider.com