Since the onset of inflation in Europe at the beginning of 2022, Tefficient has been reporting on its progress through a series of LinkedIn posts and tweets. We have compared the overall inflation to the inflation within the ‘Communication’ component of the European Central Bank’s Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP).
The ‘Communication’ component closely reflects telecommunication prices, encompassing telecommunication services and equipment, albeit also including postal services. In August 2023, it accounted for 2.7% of the expenditure weight in HICP for the Eurozone.
If we rewind to a year ago, Europe’s telecommunications companies had a significant ‘inflation deficit’ when compared to the overall inflation. The graph below illustrates the gap between:
Tefficient, in its 38th public analysis of mobile data trends, has ranked 116 operators based on metrics like average data usage per subscription, total data traffic and revenue per gigabyte. This issue covers the full year of 2022 and the first half of 2023.
Notably, 97% of operators witnessed an upswing in data usage per subscription in 2022, with 75% of them successfully translating this into increased ARPU.
Norway’s Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development last week published two analyses commissioned from Tefficient.
The conclusion is summarised (in Norwegian) in a press release from the Ministry.
Both analyses are quite comprehensive and compare Norway to the three fellow Nordic countries Denmark, Sweden and Finland. It means that they are highly interesting not just for the industry and policy makers in Norway, but in all four countries.
An example graph from the fixed analysis:
Since the Ministry has made both analyses available for public download, you can access them directly and for free from here:
Tefficient’s 37th public analysis of mobile data development and drivers compares trends across 37 countries worldwide, excluding M2M/IoT from the total bases.
Previous analyses have shown that the pandemic led to a significant increase in mobile data usage. However, the demand for more mobile data has since slowed down. In 2022, Czechia experienced the highest growth rate in mobile data usage, reaching 59%. At the other end of the spectrum, Qatar and Taiwan had relatively lower increases, both below 9%.
Operators often face uncertainty when addressing small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs). Should they treat SMEs like consumers or corporate customers? SMEs, being akin to a close-knit family, is a mass market but could sometimes require a personalised approach. Should operators assign dedicated sales representatives to cater to their specific needs and assemble tailored solutions?
While many operators equate convergence with fixed-mobile services, its scope extends far beyond that. Convergent SME bundles should not be limited to combining fixed and mobile services alone. SMEs have diverse requirements that operators can effectively address, such as switchboard functionality, contact center tools, office software, domain and hosting, cloud storage, cyber security, insurance, and more.
Tefficient’s 36th public analysis of the development and drivers of mobile data compares the trends of 45 countries globally.
In our previous analyses, we saw that the pandemic led to an increase in the mobile data usage. The demand for more mobile data has since slowed. Czechia experienced the fastest growth in mobile data usage in 2022: 56%. On the other end of the spectrum, Iceland witnessed a decrease in usage. Austria, China, Malaysia and Norway had some increase, but it was below 9%.
Tefficient conducted a series of one-to-one interviews with operator executives from various global markets to gain insights into their perspectives on mobile data monetisation and service bundling models, with a focus on current and future trends.
The interviews delved into topics such as the sufficiency of current bucket and unlimited tiered mobile data propositions, the pricing of 5G, the success of speed tiering, and how content bundling can help operators. Experiences from hard bundling, soft bundling (with choice), add-on sales and content aggregation were discussed. Additionally, the interviews explored how operators can design their propositions in a QoE and slicing future where tiering is not limited to volume, speed, and content.
With the growing reliance on internet connectivity, telecom operators have an important role to play in protecting their customers from cyber threats such as fraud and malware. However, as internet usage can also expose users to risks such as the spread of malicious content, identity hijacking, and online slander, it is crucial for telecom operators to provide comprehensive cyber security services and solutions.
The service portfolio and the methods for offering these services can vary greatly between operators. Some are better than others in packaging and upselling cyber security.
Example from AT&T
To gain a comprehensive understanding of the cyber security offerings in 14 different markets, Tefficient conducted a thorough analysis of all of the cyber security offerings from all telecom operators in those markets. The analysis categorised the offerings according to:
Tefficient’s 35th public analysis of the development and drivers of mobile data compares the trends of 46 countries from around the world. In our previous reports, we observed that the pandemic drove an increase in mobile data usage. However, during the second half of 2021 and into 2022, the demand for more mobile data slowed.
Greece experienced the fastest growth in mobile data usage, with a 45% increase. On the other end of the spectrum, Qatar, Peru, Malaysia, and Austria saw unusually slow growth rates of just 1-3%.
Fiberalliancen is a trade association for companies that own, operate and use fibre networks in Denmark. It is a part of Green Power Denmark.
For the second time (the first analysis was done in 2021), Tefficient has performed a comprehensive fibre broadband pricing benchmark covering nine European markets: Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland (new since 2021), Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, the UK and France.
As part of a press release, Fiberalliancen makes Tefficient’s analysis publicly available. Download it from the right ‘Links’ column. It’s in English.
The release concludes that:
Denmark has some of the lowest consumer prices for both new and existing fibre connections. Only French consumers generally get a better deal than Danish consumers.
Danish consumer prices – both for new and existing connections – have overall fallen from 2021 to 2022. This is only seen in Denmark and the UK.
According to Ookla, Denmark has the fastest median broadband download speeds among the countries included in the comparison.
Tefficient’s approach has been thorough and the results are presented in a set of graphs like below.
