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Streaming television service Waipu.TV said this week it now has more than one million paying subscribers in Germany, with a free version of the service used by another three million customers.
The milestone makes Waipu.TV the leading Internet Protocol-based television (IPTV) service in Germany, and comes at a time when television viewers are increasingly ditching local cable and national satellite services in favor of streaming options in the country.
Chrostph Bellmer, the CEO of Waipu.TV’s parent company Exaring AG, said the service will find even more favor with cable television customers in the country once the so-called “ancillary cost privilege” in Germany ends next year. The ancillary cost privilege currently allows landlords of apartment buildings and other multi-dwelling housing units to forge agreements with cable companies to wire their buildings for telecom services, in exchange for those telecoms securing the exclusive right to provide services over time.
“The growth of IPTV…will be fueled by the elimination of the ancillary cost privilege next year,” Bellmer said in a statement. “We expect the trend to accelerate; cable and satellite TV are technologies from the last century that will be completely replaced by IPTV in the coming years.”
Waipu.TV operates its own standalone streaming service that allows Germans to watch around 200 live television channels, including those once relegated exclusively to cable or satellite. Among the networks offered on Waipu.TV are public broadcasters Das Erste and ZDF as well as private commercial channels RTL, RTL Zwei, Super RTL, ProSieben, Sat.1, Vox and localized versions of Comedy Central, HGTV, Nickelodeon, History Channel and DAZN.
Waipu.TV also offers a white-label version of its streaming service that partners with broadband and wireless Internet providers in Germany, including Freenet AG. Its various partnerships allow Waipu.TV to claim it reaches more than 30 million households in the country.
Waipu.TV is unique from cable and satellite in that just one device is needed to stream live television content to any number of screens on the same internal network. Supported devices include smart TVs, smartphones, tablets and game consoles. In most areas, Waipu.TV channels are delivered via a dedicated fiber optic network that allows for reliable reception of broadcast and cable channels distributed by the service.
