Broadband News
News, views and analysis
Sky figures show near doubling of ‘triple play’ penetration
Sky’s prediction it could persuade its television customer base to take up its triple play of satellite television, phone and broadband appear to be vindicated with strong growth figures released today for the nine months up to the end of March.
While the leading star of its financials was undoubtedly Sky+ HD boxes surpassing the 1m mark, there was also a statistic tucked away in the report that will have broadband market leader BT concerned. Whilst tv households grew to 9.3m in total, 15% of these, or 1.4m households, now have all three services from Sky. This 15% figures represents a near doubling in a year from 0.8m or 9% just a year ago.
Under the circumstances, the corporation could be forgiven for drawing attention to its very open threat to BT and point out, yet again, that 15% is potentially the tip of the iceberg, leaving nearly 8m customers to be targeted with triple play offers.
It reported its ‘value message’ - in which it claimed BT customers could save £185 per year switching phone and broadband to Sky - has ‘resonated well with customers’ and there still ‘remains significant opportunity with 7.9m customers yet to upgrade to all three of these products’.
Nevertheless BT and TalkTalk may be buoyed by figures which show that Sky is not immune to the slowdown in net additional customers. It added 130,000 new broadband customers in the first three months of the year, compared to 229,000 for the corresponding quarter the year before (in contrast telephony customer net new additions were slightly up year on year).
Whilst the net additions figure is still impressive, given the recession, it does at least give rivals some solace that even Sky pushing its triple play message very hard to such a huge customer base is also seeing a slowing in net new broadband additions.
Hence, whilst the overall financials made impressive reading and lead to the share price soaring instantly by 5%, it should be pointed out the figures for the nine months up to the end of March contained a £107m loss for Sky Broadband and Sky Talk and a £19m loss for Sky-owned ISP Easynet.