[Satellite TODAY Insider 01-24-11] TNTSat continues to make steady progress in France, one of the Europe’s biggest markets for digital TV, and one where satellite has a strong presence. TNTSat is the French digital terrestrial offer based on satellite. The company’s satellite offer is broadcast via Astra, and announced Jan 23 that around 3.3 million TNTSat receivers were sold by the end of 2011.

    The TNTSat offer was launched almost five years ago and supported the transition from analog to digital reception. This process was completed in France in November 2011 with the switch off in the Languedoc-Roussillon region. With TNTSat, viewers are able to receive the full French digital terrestrial offer: the 19 French free-to-air channels and the 24 regional channels of France 3 and TV8 Mont Blanc, as well as four HD channels.

    To put TNTSat’s numbers into perspective, the U.K. equivalent service ‘Freesat’ announced in September that two million households were accessing its services since it launched in 2008. So, between the two services, more than five million households in the United Kingdom and France are now accessing digital terrestrial services via satellite.

    Satellite has a strong role in the TV market in France. Canalsat has long been the leader in providing satellite pay-TV. The operator has led the way in bringing HD and other services to households in France and now has around five million subscribers in France, making it one of Europe’s leaders in satellite pay-TV behind BSkyB.

    France Telecom (Orange) has also been one of the most progressive telcos in offering pay-TV services and now offers TV services, both via IP and satellite, and was one of the first telcos in Europe to really do so. At the end of September, the operator had in excess of four million digital TV customers, making it a major player on the French TV landscape.

    This is an increase of almost one million digital TV subscribers in the previous 12 months. Orange launched pay-TV services via satellite in mid-2008, so that it could offer TV services to most of the population in France.