Freesat’s announcement this month that they have reached 400,000 customers in the last 12 months is a strong start. BT’s annual results this month revealed that BT Vision their digital TV service, has now reached just 423,000 subscribers and Tiscali TV has approximately 60,000 subscribers.
Clearly Freesat is a non-subscription service, but nonetheless it finds itself in a similar position to these other smaller digital TV providers, all of which need to compete against the big three of Freeview, Sky and Virgin Media. After a strong Christmas 2008, Freesat added a further 100,000 customers in Q1 2009.
Freesat has made much of its high definition TV (HDTV) credentials and the great majority of Freesat customers have the HD enabled Freesat box. It actually offers up to 70 hours of HD programming every week, on BBC HD and ITV HD. This is a good introduction to the joys of high definition TV, but is well short of Sky+HD which has 33 HD channels to choose from.
Overall Freesat offers over 140 digital TV channels and has announced the launch of BBC iPlayer on Freesat later this year. The launch will no doubt be watched closely by the Project Canvas team as it will offer valuable insight into likely consumer take-up. Project Canvas is the next generation IPV enabled Freeview box, which will give Freeview customers access to iPlayer, ITV Player and 4 OD on their TV screens.