TV subscribers’ figures go through the roof, but does it mean anything? France is in a unique market position France added 4.6M IPTV subscriptions over the last five years, now amounting to 70% of TV Households. More precisely, it corresponds to a 73% penetration rate over FTTx subscribers, as the IPTV benefited both from intensive 3Play offers and voluntaristic fiber rollout. Free has historically bundled TV with its broadband offers, but Orange and especially Bouygues have seen an increase in take-up in recent years. In that regard, France is standing out by the absolute size of its pay-TV market, its strong share of IP-based services as opposed to cable and DTH/DTT, and the sustained growth it has delivered over the last five years. Few markets have shown such dynamism. Spain and Portugal share similarities in FTTx and 3Play take-up. Italy demonstrated good figures, but mostly through TimVision’s OTT solution, and a lesser dip in Premium Pay-TV. Other than that, “cord-cutting” has been happening across the Nordics, the British Isles, and Benelux. Germany, the second largest European pay-TV market, is also experiencing setbacks when integrating subscribers billed through ancillary costs. Yet, TV is arguably not telcos’ focus Despite their significant footprint, the four operators have never considered TV a distinct segment, nor have they regularly released figures for it. Orange even stopped disclosing TV subscriber figures this very quarter. As 3Play became a standard, TV is not considered a revenue-generating unit, and it becomes less relevant to single out its value in bundled services. This status quo is now challenged: Bouygues started offering cheaper “naked” fiber broadband offers at the end of 2024. Incidentally, it began to take the upper hand in customer additions over challenger Free. Some months later, Free, which had championed TV bundling as a commercial argument from its launch, debuted a naked broadband offer as well. The IPTV set-top box might not remain a staple of fixed services anymore. “Complementary” TV is underused The French Regulator for Electronic Communications (ARCEP) reports close to 25 million 3Play subscriptions at the end of 2024, while the Regulator for Audiovisual and Digital Communication (ARCOM) talks of 19.5 million IPTV and cable subscriptions. This is more than 1 in 5 of these bundled TV services not actually in use in the household. This gap has slightly reduced (22% unused at end 2024 against 24% in 2023), but this was mostly linked to 3Play slowing down, rather than the actual IPTV take-up. Free-To-Air (FTA) only households have kept declining, effectively fueling the IPTV conversion. The move is less clear for legacy Pay-TV technologies. SFR recently transferred part of its cable base to IPTV, but Premium TV operator Canal+ moved its DTH customers...
