BT TV additions almost double

BT YouView box

BT added 40,000 new TV customers in the three months ending March 31, almost doubling its sign up figure for each of the proceeding three quarters. 

Announcing its fiscal fourth quarter results, BT said that its TV install base has now reached 810,000, up from 770,000 in the previous quarter.

The 40,000 increase compares to a steady 21,000 jump in subscribers in Q1, Q2 and Q3. Year-on-year BT’s TV base has now grown from 707,000 for the quarter ending March 31, 2012.

The rise marks the first full quarter since BT launched its YouView-powered set-top boxes. However, BT would not breakdown how many of its TV customers are using this, as opposed to its older Vision+ box service.

BT launched its YouView offering with all of its TV and broadband packages on October 26. The boxes include a backwards-EPG and online services like the BBC iPlayer.

The news comes a day after BT gave customers a major new incentive to switch to its service, offering its new sports channels free of charge to BT broadband customers – giving free access to English Premier League games for the first time in 20 years.

At the same time BT said that it had signed a string of new content deals for its suite of three forthcoming sports channels, giving it rights to women’s football, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) bouts, action sports and MotoGP motorcycle racing.

Speaking at a BT Sports launch event in London, BT Retail CEO Gavin Patterson also said the firm was still open to doing wholesale deals for its forthcoming sports channels with Virgin Media and Talk Talk, but stressed its strategy wasn’t dependent on it.

In its Q4 results BT said that in the quarter it added 136,000 retail broadband customers, representing 48% of the DSL and fibre broadband market net additions. It added 211,000 retail fibre broadband customers and now has around 1.3m customers.

In the quarter, earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation were up 4% to £1.67 billion (€1.98 billion), though revenue was down 2% to £4.79 billion.