Lat Am pay TV to overtake US

Latin America’s growing importance to US pay TV operators has been highlighted by new research that predicts DirecTV will end the year with more Lat Am subscribers than Americans.

Media analyst Dataxis has predicted the region will account for nearly 56% of DirecTV subscribers by 2018.

More than 51% of of the firm’s 39 million customers were in the US at the third quarter of 2014, with 48.3% in Latin America and the Caribbean. But the Dataxis report predicts growth will come from the booming Latino markets rather than the US.

Juan Pablo Conti, senior analyst at Dataxis, said DirecTV had expanded by “attracting new customers through the launch of pre-paid DTH services and low-cost video packages.”

DirecTV is currently the subject of a takeover by US telecom giant AT&T, which tabled a US$48.5bn bid for the company last year.

The deal would give AT&T, the second-largest wireless carrier in the US, control of the country’s largest satellite provider, but the deal has run into regulatory issues amid controversy over competition.

The US telecoms group recently bolstered its own interests in Mexico as it looks abroad for growth, acquiring wireless assets from Nextel Mexico for US$1.9bn in January and closing a deal for media and telecoms firm Grupo Iusacell for US$2.5bn earlier in the same month.