SATELLITE TELEVISION broadcaster BSkyB yesterday slashed the price of its high definition (HD) digital recorder set-top boxes in a bid to drive subscriber growth here.
The high-tech Sky+ boxes will now retail at €49, down from €149.
This mirrors a similar move in the UK and follows a strong quarter of growth in HD subscriptions on both sides of the Irish Sea.
Sky is also planning to add about 60 new jobs to its Irish operation to handle the growth.
These will be spread between customer care and installers and form part of 1,000 new jobs that its UK parent plans to create by the end of June this year.
Sky said yesterday that it had 9.24 million customers in Britain and Ireland at the end of December, which represents the midpoint in its financial year.
It added a net 171,000 customers in the three months to the end of December.
No figures were broken out for Ireland – the broadcaster stopped publishing numbers for the Republic last year – but industry analysts estimate that Sky had just more than 580,000 customers in the Republic at the end of December.
This would compare with 535,000 at the end of 2007, a figure that was released at the time by Sky.
The satellite operator’s Irish business is thought to have about 30,000 HD subscribers at present. HD offers greater picture quality.
