The cable TV industry is getting ready to descend upon rural areas. This could be one of the main conclusions of the Annual Convention of the Cable Communications Association (ACC), which started in Bucharest yesterday.
There are two reasons for this: the relative saturation of this service in cities and the pursuit of political impact in view of the electoral 2004. There is also a potential collateral beneficiary, the advertising industry. Although Romania is sixth in terms of cable TV penetration in Europe, as nearly half of its households are cable TV subscribers, the gaps between the rural and urban environments are huge: the penetration rate has reached 75% for cities, and merely 17% for villages. Economy minister Dan Ioan Popescu, who attended the ACC convention, announced he and Communications minister Dan Nica would hold a restricted meeting next week and invite Electrica's general manager Silviu Boghiu and the managers of the main players in the cable TV industry to "find ways to develop this industry in rural areas, too."
Dan Ioan Popescu explained a better "cabling" of the villages would also make a political impact. The possibility to transmit the voting data during the upcoming elections in real time due to the installation of the cable network will eliminate the voter participation and result accuracy controversies seen during the recent referendum, Popescu feels. Until such time comes, however, an expansion of cable TV to villages could give a boost to the TV advertising industry. At the moment, viewers in Romania can receive 27 major TV channels either Romanian-speaking or with Romanian subtitles - as Communications minister Dan Nica says, which therefore make 27 advertising message vectors. Subsequently, albeit the purchasing power of the rural population is low compared to that of the urban population, the rural population is significant in terms of numbers and the effects of a higher exposure to advertising messages by means of cable TV will be interesting.
The chances of having villages tapped into cable TV and possibly other services (Internet, data, voice) are big: 81% of the households nationwide are located near such an infrastructure (Home Pass). The meeting with Electrica is important for the cable TV industry for at least two reasons. The first is that this company through its Transelectrica branch will have at least 4,500 km of operational fibre optics network by next year, and therefore become one of the most important owners of this kind of infrastructure. This potential made minister Popescu not rule out the possibility of a partnership between Electrica and the main cable operators yesterday. The second reason is that the projected meeting might also help addressing the cost issue. In a "fully deregulated" communications market, as minister Dan Nica describes it, the cost of private operators' access to the pillar infrastructure to install cables is not regulated. We are dealing with a "clear monopoly" here, ACC representatives feel.
The cable TV market has been rising fast lately: from 192 million euros in 2000 to a projected 305 million euros in 2004. victor@zf.ro
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