Leading Italian pay-TV operator Tele+ has increased its subscription fees, from the beginning of May.

The cheapest package, Digi, will now sell at L21,000 (€10.85) , while the Basic package will increase from L29,000 to L31,000 per month. Although it was announced that the Premium package will also increase to L57,000 no details were released for the Superpremium package which is expected to retail at more than L73,000 a month. Tele+ commercial director Giuseppe Borea said the increase was due to the “rise in cost for the acquisition of various events”, especially Italian league football.

Meanwhile, the Italian broadcaster’s parent company Canal+, unable to bring Italian utility Enel onboard as a shareholder, is in no hurry to find a new partner for Tele+. In a recent interview, Tele+ chairman Michel Thoulouze however did not exclude other kinds of co-operation with Enel. “We are not seeking a purely financial partner…we will only open Tele+’s capital if a partner brings us something in strategic terms,” he said According to Thoulouze, Tele+ could seek a partner to help it tackle DTT. “Over the next two years our project is in digital terrestrial [television]. If we do look for an ally, it would more likely be in this area,” he clarified.

Although initially Canal+ had wanted to cut back its majority stake by bringing in Italian investors, Thoulouze said the reasons for this line of thinking no longer apply, since Canal+ has now established itself as an accepted player in the Italian pay-TV market. He also said it was not critical that Canal+ would now have to carry Tele+’s losses alone. “We are very comfortable with our accounts in Italy. We will break even at the latest in 2003,” he said, adding Tele+ had leased over 1.5 million set-top boxes and would break even at two million. Currently, Tele+ has 2.35 million subscribers for its analogue and digital premium pay-TV services.