Cable Phone Beats Cable TV

For the first time, telephone lines installed by cable operators have exceeded the number of cable television connections. Cable telephony, already the fastest growing part of the cable business has 1.216m lines compared with 1.159 million cable television subscribers, according to the latest ITC quarterly statistics.

In percentage terms, cable telephone lines show a 113% increase over the past twelve months compared to a 49% increase in homes subscribing to cable television. Cable subscription in terms of total TV homes has now reached 5.2%.

Among the individual cable franchises, the area with the highest number of homes connected is Birmingham, with 79,615, still way ahead of any other area, the next highest being Bristol/Bath, with 41,750 homes connected. The area with the highest penetration of connection is Teesside, at 37.35%. Other areas with penetration of over 30% are Swindon, Northampton, Harlow, Cardiff and Mansfield. The cable audience to channels has increased quite considerably since last quarter; there were nine channels which had over 1 million homes receiving them; the latest statistics show this has now increased to 16 channels. The channels which now have an audience of over 1m cable homes for the first time are Nickelodeon, NBC Superchannel, TNT/Cartoon Network, TLC, CNN, VH-1 and QVC

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