Satellite TV, telephony and Internet help Liberty Global's UPC add subscribers in Romania

Cable company UPC upped its number of subscriptions in Romania by 3.6 percent last year, to 1.6 million, backed up by demand on satellite TV, digital cable, field telephony and Internet, according to its majority shareholder Liberty Global.

UPC Romania added 55,900 subscriptions to its portfolio last year. It lost consumers for its analogical cable services, where the consumer base was down 21 percent. Digital cable brought it a 24 percent increase in the number of subscribers, to 351,000, but it was still below the 508,000 customers for analogical cable. The cable business, UPC's core segment, was down 7.5 percent during the year. Demand for satellite TV, telephony and Internet counterbalanced its portfolio.

UPC competes with RCS & RDS, the largest player on the cable segment in the Romania, and with Romtelecom on the landline telephony segment. Liberty Global posted USD 9.5 billion in revenue last year, and a loss of USD 435 million, after a profit of EUR 58 million the year before. editor@romania-insider.com