The largest satellite operator in Russia continues to increase subscriber base of the paid TV services. At the same time, the operator has demonstrated stable financial situation.
According to Tricolor TV press service, on August 15, 12 million households connected by the company were registered, 63.3 % of them are the subscribers using HD-services.
Thus, since the beginning of this year more than 904.5 thousand subscribers were connected to the HD-services by Tricolor TV. This means that the total number of households using high-definition TV channels by Tricolor TV increased by 11.9 % and now it amounts to 7.59 million households.
In the first quarter 2016, Tricolor TV registered the following financial results:
- EBITDA increased by 32%;
- revenue increased by 34% and amounted to RUR 7.84 billion (over the same period of the last year it was RUR 5.85 billion);
- ARPU indicator (annual average bill per user) amounted to RUR 1363.02 as of 31 June 2016.
Alexei Kholodov, the General Director of Tricolor TV, said that quality of delivery services is the main priority for the operator. In 2017 the operator plans to abandon the use of MPEG-2 format and change it for MPEG-4, this will allow to free up a part of satellite capacities and provide a better quality of television broadcasting. The next step will be the widespread use of HEVC compression format, but Mr. Kholodov did not specify when the operator plans to complete the transition from MPEG-4 to HEVC.
This summer, Tricolor TV launched a package of TV channels in the Ultra HD format using HEVC codec.
According to the operator, 240 television and radio channels, including 30 of them in HD-standard, are available for Tricolor TV’s subscribers from “Express-AMU1” and Eutelsat 36B satellites. The operator’s subscribers can watch 276 channels with the additional subscription packages.
