Bell TV now has 1.85 million customers

H

Hugh

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In financial results released today, Bell Canada announced that it had 1,852,000 television customers as of Dec 31st, 2008, up 1.6% from 1,822,000 a year earlier.

Total revenues for Bell TV in 2008 were $1.45 billion, up 10.1% from 2007 due largely to an increase in the amount spent by customers each month.

The average Bell TV customer spent $65.37 per month in 2008, up 9.5% from $59.69 per month in 2007. The increase resulted from customer upgrades to higher-priced programming packages, rental fees and programming fees.
 
When did the digital services fee come into effect? Wasn't it around the start of 2008? So there's a $3 increase there, and package increases of about $3 throughout the year... It doesn't seem to me that their increase in revenue per customer has much to do with upgrades as much as it has to do with rate increases.
 
Looks that by having the satellite signal secure pays off.Once DN signal is secure Bell's profit should go up even higher by acquaring more customers.
 
I thought this was interesting. When the Nimiq 4 footprint changed such that it cut off American subscribers, the thought was Bell TV was going to lose a lot of paying subscribers. Apparently they didn't!

-Mike
 
I would imagine most "u.s." subscribers were pirates. Churn is 1.3% per month so over 20,000 leave Bell TV every month suggesting that despite the relative constant of total subs the situation is much more dynamic.
 
Actually, most US subs used a broker. When CanAm was busted, quite a few lost their BEV. Regardless, the picture may not be quite as rosy as it seems. One call to Bell mentioning the word "cancel" and you get 30% off for a year. Its never been easier to get a discount.
 
I think you are putting too much emphasis on the signal that has been secure for only a few months...
What makes you think that EVERY dishnetwork pirate will sign up with Bell?
 
When yearly (!) "increase" is the same as monthly (!) churn rate, the number is meaningless, i.e. rounding error.
Considering the privatization deal is dead, those numbers are even more suspect.

Therefore, if anything, the numbers tell you securing the signal had no effect on customer aquisition.
 
By comparision, in the last full year Star Choice added just under 13,000 subscribers (from a base of just under 900,000) Bell had 30,000 on a base of 1.8 million.

Some of those new Bell customers were VDSL so we don't know exact numbers for satellite.

In summary, I'd say DTH satellite is pretty much mature with zero real growth (some growth is expected because the number of households is increasing slightly) and about 18% churn per year.
 
All the Bell thieves just turned their dishes towards Dish satellites for now, so I didn't really expect that to have much impact. If Dish switches to Nagra3 and can stay secure for a while, that might change things.

-Mike
 
And where in my sentence did I say that EVERY DN pirate will sign up with BELL TV ?
 
I am not sure there were ANY new VDSL installations during the last year, so I imagine you are implying that they were customers that Bell TV picked up in Buildings already wired for VDSL.

The growth in the number of buildings being installed with the DTH 2 Dish Stacked System should have shown greater growth than these figures imply. I believe well over 250 buildings were brought on-line in the last year.

Very disappointing numbers overall.
 
Actually here in Quebec I know many French guys that now have subs to Bell or Videotron, the ones that already had a basic sub upgraded there package, for the English people around my area most are now pointing at Dish.

There will be a large growth for cable and sat subs if N3 is not hacked once Dish net switches.
 
I disagree, and think the numbers will prove that, once Dishnet is secure...
Was there a huge increase when DirecTv became secure?
I didn't think so...
Wishful thinking, but so is peace in the Middle East...
 
There will be a tectonic shift in our understanding of space and time if it is proven that the Earth is flat...;)
 
Well i hate tv, from 7 French guys I know 3 went IKS and the others have subbed to Videotron or Bell or at least they have took more than the basic sub, so I don't see how numbers and income would stay the same that would be pretty much impossible, account splitting will become popular but this will still increase the sub count.
 
So, tdi1, from your personal experience, roughly 30% of those who lost their "free" tv, have decided to come to bell. Roughly 40% made the switch to another method of pirating, that the $million$ card swap hasn't been able to stop...
I guess they have to fight piracy, but I see it like the war on drugs...
Tons of money spent, and little results
You mentioned that account sharing will increase, which will increase the sub count...
Not necessarily...If there are existing customers, and they have friends cancel their Bell account, and add the receivers to the existing account, it can actually decrease the amount of subs...
In these tough economic times, people may be more inclined to steal TV, and account sharing is something that could be as big of a problem as piracy, if there is no hacked/pirate TV available...
Ahh, who knows
Does the massive cost of a card swap pay off financially? I don't know
I do think there will be a huge increase in sales of the boxes that have been able to defeat the card swap, but I think Bells overall revenue won't be as big of a jump as some would hope for...
 
Well ya not sure if many will go with Bell, I am not sure if they can figure out a way to battle the account splitting that is a very big problem right now and mite get worse, I do see though a increase in subs for cable, Star choice and Bell only if the N3 is not hacked, and it will take probably 1-6 months after N3 is on before people will lose hope and start subbing.

I guess we can only wait and see, who knows many will probably get there big dishes up and running to and watch free tv legally, this will not increase subs for anyone though but how many people have big dishes?
 
I had a Bell rep call and go through the speech trying to get me to switch. Lies right from the get go, they uses some of these:

Yes we have On Demand

You will lose all your channels with out a dig box ( your cable provider
should have told you this)

You will get the same channels for half the cost

I was laughing at the guy. I worked at 310 Bell for 4 and a half years, I had my eyes opened to what all company's should not do. I can honestly say, I loved my ExVu HD feed, but since I switched, you can easily see why they call it, HD lite, the picture is weak and thin, compared to my cable HD feed.

Why they have to lie to their customers is beyond me, my buddy is a head tech for QX Technical, and they get more irrate customers on install they happy...I have been on both sides of the fence, best thing I have done was leave Bell for everything, their services are weak..
 
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