UPC Romania

UPC Romania is the 2nd largest cable television operator in Romania after RCS&RDS.^[1] UPC Romania provides Television, Broadband Internet, and Telephone services to 1.2 million customers as of December 31, 2009.

Its networks are 84% upgraded to two-way capability with 82% of the homes passed served by a network with a bandwidth of at least 860 MHz.

UPC Romania also offers a wide range of fixed line voice, broadband data & internet products, and hosting services to business customers ranging from SOHO customers to large multinational companies.^[2]

UPC Romania has operated on the Romanian market since 1992. In 2005, UPC Romania acquired Astral Telecom (a process that ended on October 1, 2006)

Founded in Cluj-Napoca as Astral Telecom S.A. in 1993, it is currently the owner of the largest cable network in Romania, and is also one of the most important Romanian ISPs, having about 900,000 customers (2005) and generating 25% of the web traffic in Romania.

Astral was rebranded in 2003 by Brandient, when it launched a new marketing image as well as the motto Created to evolve (Creat să evolueze in Romanian).

In 2005, Astral Telecom S.A. was bought for $420 million by UGC Europe and renamed UPC-Astral. At that time, UPC-Astral had 1.28 million customers for its TV cable service, 50,000 for the broadband (cable) Internet service, and 30,000 for the phone-over-TV-cable service.

Product Roadmap

• UPC Romania offers analog cable service with up to 46 channels, depending on location and package. Its digital TV offering includes over 100 channels (including the channels in its analog service), which is available to nearly 50% of its homes passed. UPC Romania offers premium channels and packages, including HBO and Cinemax to analog and digital subscribers for an additional fee. Through its digital service, UPC Romania also offers DVR and HD-DVR time-shifting capability and HD programming.

• UPC Romania also offers Focus Sat, a digital satellite television service that provides 45 channels in its basic service with additional specialty channels and premium packages available as well as numerous radio stations in digital quality.^[3]

• UPC Romania offers three tiers of broadband internet services with download speeds ranging from 2 Mbit/s to 24 Mbit/s.

• With UPC 3Play offer that the company launched in October 2007, for the first time on the Romanian cable communication market, a client who purchases television, internet, and telephony services in a package pays less for the total subscription.

• UPC Romania offers Digital Telephone via a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) system to over 70% of its homes passed. The only added-value service offered by the UPC Telephony Service is CLIP (Caller Line Identification Permission). UPC Romania Telephony service does not offer voice-mail, call barring and call forwarding services.

List of UPC Digital TV Channels

Beside the basis package, it includes additional subscriptions.

List of UPC Analogue TV Channels

Beside the basis package, it includes additional subscriptions. The list varies from town to town. The differences are quite small.

Key facts - as of December 31, 2009

• 2.1 million homes passed

• 1.2 million video subscribers, of which 412,000 are digital cable and DTH subscribers. Digital video services include DVR and HD

• 267,000 broadband internet subscribers. Internet speeds range up to 24 Mbit/s

• 151,000 telephony subscribers

• UPC was the first ISP in Romania that throttled peer-to-peer internet traffic (like DirectConnect, BitTorrent etc.)

References