O2’s new broadband offer is sensibly pitched as high quality at a reasonable price, but its reported target of 1 million users by 2010 looks ambitious
Ofcom is proposing taking back and re-auctioning over 30% of Vodafone and O2’s 2G spectrum as part of more general plans for ‘refarming’ 2G spectrum to allow its use for 3G services
The Apple iPhone will finally be available in the UK on 9th November, sold exclusively through Apple, O2 and Carphone Warehouse, and costing a hefty £269 when bought with a minimum £35 a month 18 month contract
Rising audiences for Cuatro in a booming TV advertising market have unexpectedly lifted Sogecable earnings in H1 2007, encouraging confidence that Cuatro will achieve breakeven in 2008, if not in 2007
French altnet Neuf Cegetel is buying Club Internet from Deutsche Telekom for an estimated €500 million and will overtake its rival Free as the #2 on the DSL market, still way behind Orange
The new consumer data tariffs from Vodafone and Orange in the UK continue the trend towards dramatically lower data prices for high end users, although they are cunningly structured to involve more moderate increases for low end users
Iliad’s 2006 results were solid with broadband subscriber growth on target, DSL market share up one point to 19%, ARPU up 7% to €34.5/month and churn (enviably) at just below 1% per month. Over 1 million of Iliad’s subscribers have dropped France Télécom line rental and Iliad now completely owns those fixed-line telecoms customer relationships
With 84,000 net pay-TV additions in 2006, Sogecable resumed subscriber growth, but we expect this pace to decline in 2007 unless Sogecable re-positions on basic and expands distribution from satellite to cable and DSL
Vodafone and Orange are planning to share their 3G networks in the UK, and are looking at potentially sharing their 2G networks in due course
Wanadoo just reported its H1 2003 results and the FY 2003 Group EBITDA target looks well in hand thanks to the outstanding performance of the directories division. The performance of the Internet segment has been less satisfactory for two reasons: Wanadoo France is facing stiff competition from Free on the 512k DSL segment; and Freeserve in the UK and Eresmas in Spain have seen very slow subscriber and revenue growth due to barebones customer acquisition activity. Wanadoo will be ramping up DSL customer acquisition activity from September onwards to achieve Internet segment targets and may reduce prices in the UK.