Bitbuzz drives UPC revenue growth

UPC Ireland’s acquisition of wifi provider Bitbuzz helped the teleco to achieve 8% revenue growth in the first quarter of the year.

The company yesterday released its Q1 results which showed subscriptions to its TV, broadband and phones services grew by 18,000 to over 1.1 million year-on-year across its home and business divisions. The purchase of Irish-owned Bitbuzz last December for a reported sum of €5m-€6m also helped drive growth, UPC said.

“UPC has had a positive start to the year and is continually making strong progress. During the quarter, we launched Ireland’s fastest residential broadband service at 240Mbps which resulted in UPC winning four awards,” said UPC Ireland chief financial officer Carol Grennan.

“We are seeing solid results from the recent acquisition of Bitbuzz, including our launch of Bitbuzz Go which offers free and unlimited wifi to the hospitality sector. In addition, our business division has expanded its service offering to include a pan-European data connectivity to a further 15 country destinations across Europe.”

BitBuzz, headquartered in Dublin, has a particular focus on the retail and leisure sector with its service commonplace in restaurants and hotels.

It’s revenues surpassed €1m in the first six months of last year. There are now 365,000 UPC broadband customers in the country — up 5% on an annual basis.

Subscriptions to its phones services saw a stronger spike with 12% year-on-year growth.

UPC’s total customer base fell by 7,000 in the quarter, however, with video subscriptions falling by 17,000.