The number of subscribers to television retransmission services increased to over 6 million in Romania last year, according to the country's communications authority ANCOM. There were increases across the different reception type sectors; cable, IP, satellite, taking the overall penetration rate to over 85 percent of households in Romania.

There was a 5 percent overall rise in subscribers in 2012, but the biggest percentage increase was recorded among IP television service subscriptions, up 34 percent, albeit to a low overall number, some 37,000. Subscriptions to cable TV services were up 6.4 percent to 3.8 million, while the number of subscribers to satellite TV increased by 2.3 percent to reach 2.19 million.

More subscribers, 61 percent of the total, live in urban rather than rural areas. Cable rules the towns; 80 percent of all urban subscribers,while satellite has the lion's share of the countryside; 63 percent of rural subscriptions.

The number of cable subscriptions in digital format increased by 40 percent to 1.24 million subscribers. Meanwhile, out of the total 6 million retransmission service subscriptions, 3.4 million are to services in digital format, a 13.4 percent increase on the previous year.

editor@romania-insider.com