The bet carried out in recent years by telecommunications companies to include pay television in their convergent rates seems to be bearing fruit. Households with packages that include this service continue to grow year after year and its level of spending seems oblivious to the ‘low cost’ boom and has even increased slightly in the last times.
This follows from the latest data published in the Household Panel of the National Commission of Markets and Competition (CNMC), corresponding to the fourth quarter of 2021, in which it is confirmed that pay television has become a differential factor when competing in value in the telecommunications market.
Specifically, the report shows that the average expenditure of Spanish households that had contracted the so-called quintuple package (fixed and mobile telephony, fixed and mobile broadband and television) amounted to 80.1 euros at the end of last year, which represents 2.8% more compared to 77.9 euros in the fourth quarter of 2020.
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In this way, spending It is once again close to the maximum of 80.8 euros that it registered in the fourth quarter of 2019 and it is 1.4% above the 79 euros at the end of 2017. In the last three months of 2014, the first time that the CNMC published household spending on quintuple packages, it amounted to 67.9 euros.
And coinciding with this increased spending, the percentage of households that have contracted a television rate has also increased. So at the end of 2021 40.3% of households had contracted a quintuple packagecompared to 38.8% a year ago or 27.2% at the end of 2016.
Spending on packages without TV falls
This good performance of telecommunications rates that include pay television service contrast with that recorded in recent years for quadruple ratesthat is, those packages that include both fixed and mobile telephony as well as fixed and mobile broadband.
Currently this is the option chosen by 31.4% of Spanish households, compared to 35.1% a year ago and far from the maximum of 52% registered at the end of 2016. Not only does it lose weight compared to quintuple rates, but it also sees an increase in those that only offer mobile and internet, which in one year have gone from 10.8% to 13 ,3%.
Several television remotes on a table.
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But the most important thing is not that there are fewer users who choose to contract this option, but that their spending is much lower than a few years ago. Specifically, in the fourth quarter of 2021, the expenditure of households that had a quadruple package was 46.6 euros.
This represents 4.9% less than the 49 euros that were paid for these packages in the fourth quarter of 2020 and 14.2% less compared to the maximum of 54.3 euros that households paid who had contracted this service in the second quarter of 2017.
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Convergent offers without television have been affected in recent years by the strong competition that exists in the Spanish market and by the rise of the low-cost market. And it is that the new players in the market entered with rates that offer fixed and mobile internet services at very competitive prices and forced the large operators to launch second brands to compete in this segment.
In fact, a recent report by Oliver Wyman pointed out that one of the characteristics that makes Spain a particularly competitive market is the excessive presence of low-cost operators in the convergent businesssince in other countries this type of company is only present in the mobile market.
Pay TV boom
Regardless of whether or not it is linked to a package of telecommunications services, the truth is that Pay TV is an increasingly popular service among users in the country.
The latest data from the CNMC reflect that At the end of the fourth quarter of 2021, 47.8% of Spanish households had contracted some pay television service. This represents 2.9 percentage points more than the 44.9% registered at the end of 2020 and 14.8 points more than in December 2017.
Depending on the place of residence, they are cities with more than 500,000 inhabitants where the percentage of households with pay television is higher (52.6%). However, this figure is quite similar to that registered in towns with between 200,000 and 500,000 inhabitants (50.8%) and between 50,000 and 200,000 (51%).
Greater is the difference with the localities with less than 10,000 inhabitants, where the percentage of households with pay television is 39.2%. For its part, in municipalities with between 10,000 and 50,000 it is 47.3%.
Compared to the previous survey, conducted in the second quarter of 2021, the strong growth of 4.8 percentage points which has occurred in the case of the smallest localities, while in the largest ones the increase was 1.7 points.
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