UPC revenues rise in dollar terms

UPC IRELAND, the communications company which operates theChorus/NTL digital television and broadband services brands, saw revenues for the first quarter of this year fall by 9.7% to $79.8 million (€60m).

However, when taking the euro-dollar exchange rate into consideration, the company – which is ultimately owned by the Colorado-based communications group, Liberty Global – saw a rise in first quarter revenues of 3.7% to €61.1m and a 4.4% year-on-year increase in operating cash flow to €23.6m.

“We are investing over €90m in our network this year alone to develop and extend more services across our national footprint. These results demonstrate the strong competitive advantage this investment program is delivering to the business in the market place. Out of a total of 1.5 million households, UPC’s network passes over 58%, with more than one in every three homes in Ireland subscribing to UPC,” said UPC Ireland chief executive, Robert Dunn.

“Looking ahead, we will be launching our HDTV [hi-definition television] service and are preparing the network to introduce faster broadband speeds of up to 120Mb through our fibre power programme,” he added.

Mr Dunn said the first three months of the year represented “a strong start” to 2009.

With regard to customer numbers, total subscribers – or revenue generating units amounted to 675,400 as of the end of March.

This figure was up from the end of last December, when it amounted to 667,000; but on a year-on-year figure was down by 0.53% – it had total customer numbers of 679,000 at the end of March of last year.

By the end of the first quarter of this year, about 35,000 people here were signed up to UPC for their telephone needs; 111,400 for their broadband needs and the company had 319,900 digital television subscribers.