According to Dataxis market intelligence monitoring, third quarter 2018 recorded 33.8 million DTH TV subscribers in Latin America, while Cable TV reached 34.8 million. This means an irreversible trend towards the end of 2018. Cable TV,  which had lost leadership in 2014, surpassed DTH again in 2018.

‘There are two main factors that explain this new trend: on the one hand, DTH was the only most affected technology by economic recession in Latin America, because it had been incorporated to lower income households. On the other hand, big operators -like Claro Brazil-  left DTH aside to move to IPTV and Cable TV, which allows a better package Internet- related services’, explained Carlos Blanco, Dataxis Latin American Research Director.

In 2005, Cable TV was four times greater than DTH in the region. In 2009 DTH started to take off, and had reached almost half of cable TV. In 2010, cable TV recorded 25 million subscribers against 14 million DTH. DTH continued its growth much more than Cable TV until it surpassed Cable in 2014 with 32.7 million subscribers, against 32.1 from Cable TV. During the following three years both technologies ran in a very similar way, until Cable TV returned to lead in 2018.