Lithuania drops HD DVB-T services

The Lithuanian incumbent Teo has decided to give up its licence to rebroadcast HD DVB-T services in the city of Kuanas on June 1.

However, there will be no changes for Teo Smart TV (IPTV) users and they will continue to see all the HD channels.

In a statement, Teo says it started HD rebroadcasts of Eurosport HD, Discovery Showcase HD and National Geographic Channel HD channels for DVB-T users in Vilnius and Kaunas in 2009, after winning the tender announced by the Radio and Television Commission.

Due to significant changes in HD broadcasting transmission service rates, it discontinued HD transmissions in the capital, Vilnius, on April 1 and will now also do so in Kaunas.

Commenting on the development, Nerijus Ivanauskas, head of B2C at Teo, said: “Rebroadcasting of HD channels over DVB-T in Vilnius has become economically infeasible. In the absence of possibilities for the countrywide development of HD rebroadcasts, we are forced to give up HD rebroadcasts in Kaunas too. However, we continue to expand our fiber-optic access network in order that as many as possible residents of Lithuania have access to the modern technology-based Teo Smart TV”.

Digital pay TV subscribers up 12.3% year-on-year in Lithuania in Q2

The Communications Regulatory Authority of the Republic of Lithuania (ryšių reguliavimo tarnyba – RRT) has released statistics for the Lithuanian Communications Sector in the second quarter of 2013.

At the end of the second quarter Lithuania had 731.9 thousand subscribers to the pay TV services offered by cable and MMDS, digital terrestrial, satellite, and IPTV networks, representing 59.4% of all households. During the quarter, the number of subscribers remained virtually unchanged (down 0.1 percent).

At the end of June the number of subscribers to digital television services totalled 408.1 thousand. The figure was made up of 125.4 thousand subscribers to cable and MMDS, 109.8 thousand subscribers to IPTV, 72.0 thousand subscribers to digital terrestrial and 101.0 thousand subscribers to satellite television networks.

Digital subscribers increased by 1.1% during the quarter and by 12.3% year-on-year.

Pay-TV expands in Lithuania

Lithuania had 407,600 homes receiving digital pay-TV services at the end of the second quarter, according to preliminary data published by the country’s Communications Regulatory Authority (RRT).

This represented 1% and 12% increases on three months and a year earlier.

Just under a third (125,400) of digital pay-TV homes received services via cable or MMDS, with the remainder opting for IPTV (109,300), DTT (72,000) and DTH (101,000).

Revenues in the sector amounted to LTL34.7 million (€10.1 million), or 0.3% lower than three months earlier.

The total value of the electronic communications market in Q2 amounted to LTL536.6 million, a 1% reduction on the previous quarter.