IPTV Takes Belgium by Storm

December 6, 2006 - Belgacom, Belgium's biggest telco operator, has topped the 100,000 mark for its interactive, digital IPTV offering faster than expected. Instead of the end of the year, as originally anticipated, the Belgian operator reached exactly 102,971 subscribers for its IPTV offering back at the end of September 2006.

The solution is based on Surpass Home Entertainment from Siemens, a turnkey end-to-end solution for IPTV that is brought into Belgian households via the ADSL telephone line.

Discussing its financial results for the third quarter, the Belgian fixed-network and mobile operator Belgacom drew attention to the particular success of its IPTV services – i.e. television via IP-based broadband lines. As early as the end of September 2006, Belgacom TV had already registered 102,971 customers. The net ARPU (average revenue per user) stood at 11.6 euros for the first nine months of 2006. This figure showed a rise in the third quarter which can obviously be traced to the introduction of additional services such as "Rewatching TV" and special offerings sorted by topic.

In mid-2004, Belgacom chose Siemens as its partner for developing its interactive digital TV offering. The Belgacom TV offering includes all the major TV broadcasters. A pay-per-view offering is also available, as well as a digital videotheque with around 300 movies for video on demand. Subscriptions for watching soccer have already proved to be especially popular, with Belgacom's exclusive broadcasting rights allowing fans to follow the matches in the Belgian league live.

Belgacom is another telco proving that IPTV is the answer for operators wanting to deploy television services. European telcos such as Fastweb, Telefonica and France Telecom have successfully deployed IPTV to their customers and all possess over 100,000 subscribers. BT is the next in line to deploy its IPTV service and only time will tell if the UK market is ready to receive IPTV as successfully as Belgium and indeed many other European countries have.