Sky Signs Up Its 500,000th Subscriber!

21, June 2002

Sky Television confirmed today that it now has over 500,000 subscribers, representing over 37% of all New Zealand households and confirming its position as one of the fastest growing pay television operations in the world

An Auckland mother of two, Lynda Doorish from Titirangi has become SKY’s 500,000th subscriber.

Lynda, her husband Decklan and teenagers Laura and Tom had discussed getting SKY Digital for some time but said the reason they decided to sign up now was so for the World Cup soccer.

Lynda Doorish said she had agonised for two weeks over which package to sign up to and was delighted to hear that this delay had meant they were subscriber number 500,000.

17 year-old Laura Doorish said, “ I was very surprised that SKY had so many subscribers especially with less than 4 million people in New Zealand.”

Her father, Decklan, was also impressed with SKY’s subscriber numbers saying, “it’s a good market share really.”

Along with the soccer the family most enjoyed watching the music channel J2, the rugby, E-Entertainment and the news channels.

As of Thursday June 20, 2002, SKY recorded a total subscriber count of 501,886. This figure includes 135,992 UHF subscribers, 365,894 broadband subscribers including digital, commercial and other subscribers delivered through resale agreements.

Over the past two years SKY has continued to enjoy rapid growth and this together with continuing low disconnect levels, has resulted in an all time record number of subscribers.

SKY Television Chief Executive, John Fellet said, “The last 100,000 subscribers have joined SKY in the fastest time in the company’s history.”

“This can be attributed to the fact that SKY is now offering a greater variety of channels and a stronger product on it’s digital services”, he said.

“In some markets such as Wellington SKY has almost reached 50% of the potential subscribers, said Fellet.”

Ends

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