The story
At the beginning, what would become Boxer's business was laid with two companies: Senda, which rented out the program cards that would decrypt the broadcasts, and Boxer, which would rent out digital boxes and sell subscriptions.
Senda i Sverige AB was formed in December 1997 and was initially majority owned by Radiotjänst in Kiruna (60 percent) while Teracom owned the rest. The following year, TV4 AB began to lobby for them to also become part owners of Senda. And so it was, after which Senda was owned by SVT, UR, TV4 and Teracom. However, TV4's co-ownership caused protests from other commercial channels and TV4 therefore chose to leave Senda on 18 December 1998. Senda later became principally owned by Teracom. SVT remained with a minority position in Senda until 2002.
During the digital ground network's first year, things went slowly. When broadcasts began in April 1999, very few people could watch the digital broadcasts. In October 1999, Boxer began to build up his business. Then Anders Appelqvist was CEO and 500 households had a digital box. The supply was thin. In addition to the usual terrestrial channels, there were SVT24, TV8 and Canal+'s channels as well as some local channels; TV4 had started broadcasting as late as September. In January 2000, 4,000 households had rented digital TV boxes.
On January 31, Kanal 5 and TV3 began broadcasting, and in March ZTV, Viasat Sport and TV1000 also began broadcasting.
Boxer was originally Teracom's subsidiary. In April 2000, Skandia joined as a partner.
At the beginning of 2001, Boxer had 44,000 customers. On January 1, 2001, MTG decided to charge an extra fee of SEK 115 for TV3, ZTV and TV8 to cover, according to them, lost advertising revenue. This brought Boxer's sales to a standstill. On June 19, MTG decides to completely stop broadcasting in the terrestrial network in August. When MTG stopped broadcasting, Boxer had 80,000 customers. In addition, CEO Anders Appelkvist resigned and was replaced by Crister Fritzson later in the year.
At that time, Boxer had interactive services in the form of the Boxerportalen, also called Boxer.tv, which was a web portal that Boxer's customers could visit via their TV using their set-top boxes. The portal included news, games, the chat channels "Chatziki" and "Poolen" as well as an email service.
MTG was replaced later in the year by other channels. Eurosport, CNN and Nickelodeon began broadcasting on August 1, 2001. On December 3, MTV, VH1, Discovery Channel and Animal Planet also began broadcasting. In 2001, the company was also restructured and the number of employees was reduced from 90 to 30. In February 2002, Boxer changed further. The interactive services the company had previously were removed because it did not attract customers. The model based on Boxer renting out the digital boxes was also replaced by the retailers providing the decoder, which in practice meant that the customers had to own their own decoder.
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In 2002, Boxer and Senda merged.
At the turn of the year 2002/2003, Boxer had 140,000 customers. In December 2003, Boxer reached 200,000 customers. After that, sales of subscriptions took off. After TV3 and ZTV started broadcasting in the digital terrestrial network again in March 2004, Boxer was able to offer the most watched Swedish channels, something that made sales really take off. TV3 and ZTV originally broadcast unencrypted for a few months, but became part of the encrypted offering in the fall. On December 31, 2004, Boxer had 375,000 customers, which was an increase of 175,000 during the year 2004. After the first quarter of 2005, Boxer had 410,000 customers, they state themselves.
In April 2005, Skandia Liv sold its holdings in several unlisted companies, including Boxer. New 30 percent owner thus became the British venture capital company 3i. At mid-year 2005, Boxer claimed to have 450,000 customers. After the switching off of the analogue network on Gotland, Crister Fritzon stated that "a majority of the Gotlanders who got digital TV in the weeks before the transition, seem to have got pay TV and the majority of them Boxer". The 500,000th customer arrived in November 2005 and was, according to Boxer, a woman in Östergötland who was given a PVR box at a ceremony in Motala (the days before the mast there was to be switched off for analogue broadcasts).
In the autumn of 2004, the "Tvillingpaketet" (later renamed the Tvillingkortet) was launched, which gave discounted access to the Boxer package's channels on an extra card for those who were already Boxer customers. A special "Barnkort" with children's channels and a "Short-term card" (later renamed a cash card) which gave access to the Boxer package's channels for a limited time without commitment were launched in May 2005.
In the spring of 2008, Boxer won a license from the Danish state to start and operate digital pay TV services in Denmark. The license ran for 12 years with exclusive rights and the license was won in strong competition with MTG and Telenor. On 21 July Boxer, in a consortium with BT (British Telecom) and Communicorp, won the license to operate pay TV in Ireland, here again in strong competition from other operators.
At the beginning of 2009, Boxer had 689,000 customers.
At the end of 2010, the first national HDTV broadcasts were launched, which use the new broadcast technology DVB-T2 as opposed to older DVB-T which was used for local test broadcasts in the Mälardalen by SVT's HD channel SVT HD until spring 2010. At the end of 2010, SVT's HD broadcasts made a comeback in the digital terrestrial network, but instead of an HD channel that combined SVT's range, both SVT1 and SVT2 were launched as HD channels with the same range as in the SD range. Both are free channels. Boxer launched an optional HD package at the end of 2010 for customers with either of the two major program offerings Boxer Mix or Boxer MAX. The optional HD package includes MTVN HD (which does not have the same range as MTV but is more focused on music videos and concerts), National Geographic HD, TV3 HD, TV4 HD and Kanal 5 HD. TV4's HD channel TV4 HD, which was planned to start broadcasting around the turn of the year between 2010 and 2011, thus did not become a free channel unlike TV4 in SD which was part of the free offer for which no subscription is required. Kanal 5 HD started broadcasting on February 1, 2011, TV3 HD on March 1, 2011 and TV4 HD started after delays on March 3, 2011. In April 2011, Boxer became the first Nordic TV provider to broadcast 3DTV via the terrestrial network.
The Swedish Quality Institute (SKI) gave Boxer a score of 66,3 out of 100 in the "Customer Satisfaction for Digital TV in the Private Market" in 2015, which was close to the industry score (66.7). In the 2016 survey, it fell to 57.4, far below that of the industry (62.1). It increased to 59,3 in 2017, vimaking it slightly closer to the industry standard (62).
Autumn 2018 saw the merged of Com Hem AB with Tele2 Sverige AB. The merger was approved on 30 April 2020 making Boxer a part of Tele2's services.
On 2 January 2025, Boxer left the terrestrial platform, with its subscriber base moving to the internet-based service. Boxer is since May 2025 a brand used for broadband and TV services.
From Wikipedia’s article on Boxer TV Access, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4