Sky 's quarterly report shows it is still growing its customer base - despite a higher churn rate. The satellite broadcaster has added 340,000 customers, yet its overall figures are up just 51,000 over the first three months of this year. This is Sky's worst quarterly customer addition rate since the sun rose on Sky Digital.
The company now has 8,492,000 customers, with Sky subscribers passing 2.1 million - over 199,000 have been added since the turn of the year.
It's clear that Sky is finding the market ever more competitive: churn is now 13.7 per cent. It's not just Virgin Media of course, Freeview is having a major impact as it continues to grow.
HD subscriber numbers are still improving, with quarterly growth of 60,000, meaning Sky HD has acquired 244,000 subscribers within 10 months.
Sky Broadband doubles
Sky also bigged up its Sky Broadband and Sky Talk packages - services it was able to offer after the acquisition of ISP Easynet. The number of Sky Broadband customers has doubled since 1st January to 553,000, while Sky Talk has also done well.
"Sky Broadband has gone from zero to half a million customers in just nine months and Sky Talk has jumped 80 per cent per cent to 400,000 in the last three months," explains Brian Sullivan, managing director of Sky's Customer Group.
The company says 25 per cent of Sky Broadband joiners are completely new to Sky services.
Sky says it will cover 70 per cent of broadband exchanges by the end of June. And it couldn't resist the chance to have a go at Virgin Media, saying its Sky Talk customers would pay 70 per cent more with Virgin Media.
In its third quarter results, also announced today, Sky said it made an operating profit of £613 million including losses of £137 million connected to the acquisition of Easynet.