Eutelsat has published the results of a study of French satellite homes carried out on its behalf by Credome. At the end of June 1999 it found a total of 3.507 million satellite homes, greater than the number of cable homes (2.825 million according to figures from AVICAM). "Satellite has grown 69 per cent in one year, compared to 16 per cent for cable," said Olivier Millies Lacroix, who heads group development and planning strategy at Eutelsat. Reception from Hot Bird has grown even faster: 73 per cent, to reach 1.912 million. Millies Lacroix pointed out that this is 55 per cent of all French satellite homes. A total 4.7 million homes (cable and satellite) receive programming from Hot Bird.

While he admitted that the 1998 satellite figures may be under-estimates (1.1million satellite homes), he attributed the high rate of growth of Hot Bird reception to a number of factors: the sustained growth in the TPS platform, the availability of a large range of free to air channels on Hot Bird, and the simplification and fall in price of multi-satellite reception equipment. Surprisingly to many people, analogue satellite receivers continue to sell well. This is confirmed by a GfK study on consumer electronics, which estimates the sale of analogue satellite receivers during the previous year at 550,000 units. 50,000 free to air digital receivers are in service, and 200,000 who subscribe to one of the digital platforms (TPS on Hot Bird or Canalsatellite on Astra) have installed a dual feed system to receive free to air digital on the other satellite.

Thirteen degrees East is not the only orbital position of interest to DTH homes. Some 770,000 dishes are aimed at the W2 position (16 degrees east) to receive Arab language channels. Penetration in Arab-language homes is about 50 per cent.

Thirty-three per cent of cable and satellite homes have a PC (26 per cent in all TV homes). Almost double the number of satellite homes have PC with Internet access compared to TV homes at large (11.5 per cent compared to 6 per cent).