Digital TV penetration leaps as Freeview households near 6m

by Daniel Farey-Jones, Brand Republic 09-Dec-05, 11:00

LONDON – The growth of digital TV has accelerated in the third quarter of 2005, with 65.9% of households now viewing digital and quarterly Freeview box sales topping a million.

This is a dramatic climb from 63% in the second quarter and 61.9% in the first quarter, and coincides with strong growth in Freeview box sales.

There were more than 1m sales of Freeview set-top boxes and televisions with integrated Freeview tuners during the quarter, compared with more than 700,000 during the second quarter.

Ofcom estimates that around 600,000 households have bought Freeview as their only source of digital viewing during the quarter, taking the total of Freeview-only households to 5.775m. The total of free-to-view households is estimated at 6.3m.

Digital pay TV added just more than 90,000 subscribers during the quarter. Sky accounted for 48,000 of those, bringing its penetration to 7.472m.

In the cable market, Telewest and NTL, added around 43,300, giving digital cable around 2.6m customers. However, the number of analogue subscribers who left outweighed the gain in digital subscribers. This leaves the total cable subscriber base down slightly to just below 3.3m.

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