UPC: Revenues up, subscriptions down

Apogee

Irish Times, Nov 6 2009

UPC Ireland's revenues rise 2.2% to €184.6m in September

REVENUES AT UPC Ireland, the company that owns cable TV operators NTL and Chorus, rose by 2.2 per cent year on year to €184.6 million in the nine months to the end of September.

Its operating cashflow – a measure of profitability – rose by 6.9 per cent to €73.9 million for the same period. In the third quarter – July to September – revenues rose by 1.1 per cent to €61.6 million, while its operating cashflow was up 3.4 per cent to €24.5 million. Figures released by UPC yesterday show it kept losing TV subscribers in the third quarter, but it made gains in broadband and telephone connections.

Commenting on its revenue performance, UPC Ireland chief executive Robert Dunn said sales growth was “not as strong as we would like”. But he added that sales picked up last month and that “we’ll see a stronger fourth quarter in terms of revenues”.

Mr Dunn said UPC’s TV revenues had been affected by the difficulties at Setanta Sports, which resulted in a number of customers cancelling their premium packages with the Irish broadcaster.

He said the uptake of ESPN’s premium sports packages was “better than expected”, but declined to give a figure.

At the end of September, UPC had 509,900 analogue and digital TV subscribers. This compared with 547,000 at the end of September 2008. It boosted its broadband customer base to 134,900 at the end of September, up from 94,000 a year earlier. In telephony, it more than doubled its subscriber numbers to 53,000 over the 12-month period.

Mr Dunn said the rate of customer loss in TV has slowed, due in part to the launch of high-definition services and a digital video recorder. It now has 338,000 subscribers to its digital TV service.

“We’re providing a better service and better quality service now,” he added.

UPC is spending up to €1 billion upgrading its network. This programme has two years to run.

UPC is the second biggest TV operator here behind satellite company Sky, which has over 600,000 Irish customers.

icdg

Moved to Cable/MMDS

Elmo

Seems to me that UPC or whomever owns the cable network are always investing money into upgrading their service.

Freddie59

Elmo wrote: »

Seems to me that UPC or whomever owns the cable network are always investing money into upgrading their service.

Ergo 20 Megs.:)

Elmo

Freddie59 wrote: »

Ergo 20 Megs.:)

Yeah but I am still confused as to why a Billion is required are they extending the network?

They seem to always be in a 2 year run. Still can't get phone off them.

bk

Elmo wrote: »

Yeah but I am still confused as to why a Billion is required are they extending the network?

I expect 1 Billion is the total UPC have spent on the network over the years and not per year.

They have been replacing all the backhaul with Fibre optic cable and optical nodes and they also seem to be replacing much of the actual coaxial cable to each house.

That is all a major and expensive undertaking, but should leave them with an excellent network with lots of bandwidth for various new services.

r*oc

Elmo wrote: »

Yeah but I am still confused as to why a Billion is required are they extending the network?

They seem to always be in a 2 year run. Still can't get phone off them.

I've been trying to get bb & phone off them for the past 8 yrs & they keep telling me that my area is due to be upgraded. How long does an upgrade take?
I live in dublin 15 and all around me is fibre, but still no bb or phone?

I don't get it !

Elmo

r*oc wrote: »

I've been trying to get bb & phone off them for the past 8 yrs & they keep telling me that my area is due to be upgraded. How long does an upgrade take?
I live in dublin 15 and all around me is fibre, but still no bb or phone?

I don't get it !

I am the same have been asking for Phone for the past 3 years and still cann't get it. I have broadband from them. D13 here.

Bazzy

r*oc wrote: »

I've been trying to get bb & phone off them for the past 8 yrs & they keep telling me that my area is due to be upgraded. How long does an upgrade take?
I live in dublin 15 and all around me is fibre, but still no bb or phone?

I don't get it !

For BB / Voip to work you need a return path basically two way network info up and info down the amps and perhaps cable that feed your estate may not be suitable for a two way network.

If you picture a daisy chain with say twenty daisies on it if one of them breaks you've no chain

a network would be fairly similar in a non daisy way so it needs to be able to go the whole network.

It can be terminated anywhere on the network they wish but upc generally upgrade an entire area rather than half of it.

Also some customers can only get bb and no phone as the node that feeds that network needs to be certified to carry the voip service.

So you may be able to get bb before phone

Elmo

In a way they are lying to suggest that you can have triple play. How many people can actually get triple play from UPC?

r*oc

Bazzy wrote: »

For BB / Voip to work you need a return path basically two way network info up and info down the amps and perhaps cable that feed your estate may not be suitable for a two way network.

If you picture a daisy chain with say twenty daisies on it if one of them breaks you've no chain

a network would be fairly similar in a non daisy way so it needs to be able to go the whole network.

It can be terminated anywhere on the network they wish but upc generally upgrade an entire area rather than half of it.

Also some customers can only get bb and no phone as the node that feeds that network needs to be certified to carry the voip service.

So you may be able to get bb before phone

The simple truth about why i haven't got their triple service is because UPC have planned their upgrade around d15 incorrectly which seems to be the story of their lives. They have installed insufficent fibre around the nodes from their main hubs & then over-sold their triple service. The contention ratio for their broadband is well above what its supposed to be & if they install another node near where i live, by the time they swith over the over-sold customers, that node will be at full capacity.
What they need to do is, replace the existing (40) fibre along the ongar road with a new (80) fibre to provide a "Proper" service.
I'm sick to the teeth with this so called service provider & their blatant lies about upgrades etc etc. They only ever do things in half measures.

Cupart

r*oc wrote: »

I've been trying to get bb & phone off them for the past 8 yrs & they keep telling me that my area is due to be upgraded. How long does an upgrade take?
I live in dublin 15 and all around me is fibre, but still no bb or phone?

I don't get it !

Neither can I and I'm in D2 :mad: