Quad-play – a growth engine?

quad signQuad-play isn’t new: Five and a half years have elapsed since Orange launched its converged product Open in France in August 2010. It’s soon been three and a half years since Telefónica launched Movistar Fusión in Spain in October 2012.

Telefónica and Orange are quarter after quarter showing investors and analysts figures that show great take-up of these converged services. Continue reading Quad-play – a growth engine?

Ziggo/Vodafone: Decouple broadband, start to invest – to stop customer outflow

vodafone-logoIn Europe, we woke up with the news that Vodafone and Liberty Global had agreed to merge their Dutch operations Vodafone and Ziggo.

Less than two weeks ago, Telenet, Liberty Global’s affiliate in Belgium, got a green light from the European Commission to buy the mobile operator BASE from KPN. So already before today, Liberty took a major step in the mobile direction.

Read the original commentary on what this means for Europe

Vodafone, on its part, has demonstrated an appetite for cablecos: In 2013, it began acquiring Kabel Deutschland and in 2014 it acquired Ono in Spain. Continue reading Ziggo/Vodafone: Decouple broadband, start to invest – to stop customer outflow

Crowdsourced 4G experience: Benchmarking Nordic operators

OpenSignalThe mobile network performance crowdsourcer OpenSignal published its latest State of LTE report today. This time it’s based on data samples from 357924 mobile users who have OpenSignal’s app on their Android devices. The network performance data isn’t just gathered when users actively do a measurement; it’s collected all the time and the number of samples are therefore hundreds of millions. The stats thus better represent the normal behavioural patterns of users when it comes to time and location. The data is collected during the fourth quarter of 2015. Continue reading Crowdsourced 4G experience: Benchmarking Nordic operators

Denmark – 5 months after the non-merger

Telenor Telia heart2On 11 September 2015, Telia and Telenor announced that they had been unsuccessful in reaching an agreement with the EU Commission for Competition concerning a merger of the two operators in Denmark, which was announced 9 months earlier on 3 December 2014.

The concerns from EU presumably centered around a weakened competitive market in Denmark if Telia and Telenor were allowed to merge. As a background, the two companies had already merged their networks into a common JV called TT-Netværket.

So what has happened since – it has now been 5 months or so since the news about the failed merger? So you know what to expect in e.g. the UK and in Italy if the mobile mergers won’t be approved there. Continue reading Denmark – 5 months after the non-merger

34 petabytes of zero-rated video streamed since launch of Binge On

Mid November last year, T-Mobile USA launched its 10th uncarrier initiative, Binge On. It has been the most controversial uncarrier launch so far.

Binge on2

Why? Binge On zero-rates commercial video services – so that T-Mobile customers can watch as much as they like without emptying their data bucket. The trade-off? Video streams are slowed down to about 1.5 Mbit/s which means that image quality suffers – which is visible, but perhaps not on smaller screens like smartphones and tablets. Continue reading 34 petabytes of zero-rated video streamed since launch of Binge On

5 GB per any SIM and month no longer a utopia – if price is right

Which operator is in the top when it comes to mobile data usage?

Mobile data usage 1H 2015

Which country charges the most for mobile data?

Find the answers to these and other important mobile data usage and monetisation questions in tefficient’s 12th public analysis on the topic. Continue reading 5 GB per any SIM and month no longer a utopia – if price is right

Wi-Fi – the last piece of the customer retention puzzle?

Why should an operator complement their customers’ experience of mobile data with Wi-Fi? To improve customer loyalty?

puzzle2

Wi-Fi is a positively loaded term for many users – which speaks for using it as a retention tool. But are there operators that successfully reduce churn – without using more on customer retention – by having Wi-Fi included in their mobile propositions? Continue reading Wi-Fi – the last piece of the customer retention puzzle?

4G penetration: Global top list

4G penetration top list Sep 2015 24G is rapidly becoming a mature market normality.

Our top list to the right shows the reporting operators of the world with more than 40% 4G adoption in their retail bases as of September 2015.

The three Korean operators LG Uplus, KT and SK Telecom lead. No news; this has been the case since the first days of 4G. Continue reading 4G penetration: Global top list

Chart: Why Netflix’ expansion is good news for mobile carriers

netflixSome of you might feel that tefficient tends to overstate the importance of Netflix for telecoms.

In most European markets where Netflix operates, it has as many subscribers as all other paid video streaming services together. In some of these countries Netflix has more households subscribing to its service than there are IPTV households in the country. Continue reading Chart: Why Netflix’ expansion is good news for mobile carriers

Nine predictions for 2016 – which can be measured


Prediction 1 – mobile data usage of 10 GB per month

At least one mobile operator will reach an average mobile data consumption of 10 GB per any SIM and month in 2016

10 GBWe think this operator is Finnish and that Elisa and DNA both have a chance to snatch this world first. Finland is already having the highest mobile data usage in the world and the current usage level will not even have to double as in 2015 to reach 10 GB in 2016. Continue reading Nine predictions for 2016 – which can be measured

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