Telefonica makes move on Spanish pay TV provider

Spanish carrier Telefónica on Tuesday announced that it has made a €725m bid for 56 per cent of Distribuidora de Televisión Digital, a Spanish pay-TV provider that operates under the Digital Plus brand.

The stake in question is currently owned by Spanish media company Promotora de Informaciones. Telefónica itself already owns a 22 per cent stake in Digital Plus. The broadcaster holds the television rights to broadcast some matches from Spain’s professional football league, Liga BBVA.

The proposed move fits in with a shift to multiplay in operator strategy. Almost one quarter (23.1 per cent) of operator respondents to the Telecoms.com Intelligence annual industry survey 2014 said that an integrated or multiplay offering was one of the top three means of differentiation among mobile operators in their market.

Already in 2013 we had noted a growing belief among some operators that being able to provide a full range of communications services—fixed and mobile, broadband and TV, personal cloud storage—might be a more compelling proposition in terms of customer acquisition and retention, than a single offering.

Almost 70 per cent of respondents agreed that multiplay operators will have achieved significant advantage over pure play operators within five years.

More operator respondents (21.3 per cent) than respondents overall (18.6 per cent) voiced strong agreement that Pay TV is the most important element in a multiplay offering.