Portugal Telecom surpasses 500,000 pay-TV clients
LISBON, Oct 21 (Reuters) - Portugal Telecom's (PTC.LS) MEO pay-TV service has surpassed the half a million clients mark, about doubling its client base from a year earlier and adding 57,000 customers since mid-2009, PT said on Wednesday.
MEO offers so-called triple-play services including TV, broadband Internet and fixed-line phones, recently reinforced by faster, high capacity fibre optic connections.
It competes against the country's pay-TV market leader Zon Multimedia (ZON.LS), which itself was spun off from Portugal Telecom in 2007 and has been struggling of late to stop client loss, particularly to MEO, by adding triple-play and fibre access.
PT stock was 0.4 percent off at 8.09 euros in early trading, largely in line with the broader market in Lisbon.
"The fact that PT continues to show a healthy trend in terms of adding pay-TV clients is another sign of improvements in the dynamics of the Portuguese market," Espirito Santo Research said in a note, expecting MEO to hit 577,000 clients by year-end. (Reporting by Andrei Khalip and Patricia Rua; editing by Elaine Hardcastle)
