China's paying cable subscriber has fallen below 160 million, reaching 159.93 million by the end of the second quarter, according to the industry statistics.
The number of that in the same period of last year is 167.06 million and 174.65 million by the end of 2015.
By comparison, IPTV has captured a lot of subscribers in China, which grew rapidly to 103 million by the end of June this year with 16 million additions in the first half of the year.
Putting pressure on the cable TV operators, the fast growth of IPTV subscribers results from operators' significantly improving the broadband network capacity these years, setting video services as their basic services and adopting marketing strategy of bundling the fixed services with the mobile.
However, China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, or S.A.R.F.T., told China Unicom and China Mobile to stop and fix the illegal IPTV business in strict accordance with supervision requirements in a warning on June 9.