In 2020, 93.2% of households had subscribed a pay-television (pay-TV) signal distribution service, an increase by 5.4 percentage points compared to the previous year.
The number of pay-TV subscribers reached 4.2 million, 163 thousand more (+4%) than the previous year.
It was not possible to identify any potential statistical effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the digital terrestrial television (DTT) migration process on the evolution of the number of subscribers to this service.
Pay-TV growth was driven by offers supported on fibre optics (FTTH), which recorded 276 thousand more subscribers compared to 2019 (+14.4%), reaching 2.2 million subscribers. This growth resulted not only from the addition of new customers, but also from the transfer to FTTH of customers that were previously supported on other networks.
Fibre optics has been the main form of access to this service since 2018, reaching 51.6% share by the end of 2020. This is followed by cable TV (31.1%), DTH (10.6%) and ADSL (6.8%).
By the end of 2020, MEO was the provider with the highest share of pay-TV subscribers (40%), followed by the NOS Group (39%), Vodafone (17.3%) and NOWO (3.5%). In the residential segment, the NOS Group maintained the highest share (39.8%), followed by MEO (38.6%), Vodafone (17.6%) and NOWO (3.9%).
Vodafone and MEO were the providers that, in net terms, attracted the most subscribers when compared to the same period of the previous year, with their shares increasing by 1.1 and 0.4 percentage points respectively. On the other hand, the shares of the NOS Group (-1.1 percentage points) and NOWO (-0.4 percentage points) observed a decrease.
Consult the statistical report:
- Subscription television signal distribution service - 2020 https://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?contentId=1611647
