Canal Digital provides DTH services across Scandinavia and already offers around 20 HD channels, making it one of the more progressive providers of HD services in Europe. However, operating in the Nordic region has proved far from easy, and the operator’s subscriber growth has stalled in recent times. In an interview with the IBC E-Daily, Christian Albech, CEO of Canal Digital, talks about the operator’s plans.

IBC E-Daily: What are your plans to expand your HD services?

Albech: We will need more capacity, as you need more bandwidth for these channels. We have been quite clear when talking to channel suppliers. We want more HD channels. Over the next two years, we plan to reduce the number of SD channels. We have 20 HD channels now. We would like to add around four more HD channels in the next 12 months, but it will depend on what will be developed by channel suppliers. We want quality content. Two years ago, we took a quite bold decision. We put all our HD channels into the basic family package and increased the price by 50 percent. We do not separate the HD or the family package.

IBC E-Daily: How is Canal Digital looking to grow its subscriber base and improve average revenue per use (ARPU)?

Albech: For us, everything is about content. That is the only way for us to generate more money. If everybody had the same content there would be a price war, and that is something we do not want. Another key issue for us is that we want to secure important and attractive sports rights. We have been very active in acquiring sports rights. Everything when it comes to growth and improving ARPU is about content. Our main strategy has been to convert from standard TV to HDTV. Ten years ago, we went from analog TV to digital TV. We have exactly the same strategy this time. We want to be the first to really move from SD to HDTV. In Europe, only BSkyB has more HD channels than us, so we will follow up on that.

IBC E-Daily: How will develop your services for customers?

Albech: What we are doing now is to talk to the big companies in Europe and the United States to see what they are doing. In a small market such as the Nordics, to bring new services to customers will cost a lot of money. We want to see what others are doing, and we have strong relationships with U.S. players. We will talk to our content suppliers to see what they are doing.

IBC E-Daily: With strong cable, IPTV, DTT and DTH offerings in many of these markets, how will you stay ahead of the competition?

Albech: We have seen that other platforms could have problems with capacity, so with more HD-ready TVs being sold in the region, we saw there was an opportunity for us here to gain a competitive advantage. When it comes to the competition with DTT for example, we have an advantage because we are able to get the capacity we need. DTT networks will have a problem with capacity. When it comes to cable, I think cable is not really a competitor in terms of DTH.

IBC E-Daily: How do you rate the IPTV competition?

Albech: We see IPTV as the growing competitive threat to DTH. In Sweden, the IPTV competition is quite strong. Telia has 400,000 customers taking IPTV services, but as far as we know not all of them are paying for these services. It will be exciting to see what happens in the future. In Denmark, they have IPTV packages, but the utility companies have not been very successful so far. We have to respect the competition from utility companies, telcos and fiber providers, as I think they would like to go into the market where DTH is strong.