Analysis & Consulting, 2014
Preparing and presenting “How are telcos, cellcos and cablecos using Wi-Fi to strengthen existing business?” for 200 participants at the Wi-Fi Innovation Summit in Copenhagen 9-10 December.
Some of the presented content is available in this analysis.
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Analysis & Consulting, 2014
Independently identifying and presenting customer-specific initiatives to increase efficiency to a key customer operator of a global services provider.
Analysis & Go-to-market, 2014
How have operators introduced mobile-fixed convergent quad-play in Europe’s most advanced markets France, Spain, Portugal – and in emerging quad markets like Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK and Germany? How has competition reacted?
Using facts: How have these quad introductions affected market share, churn, acquisition & retention cost, demand for mobile, fibre-speed broadband and TV – and revenue and margin? Which defensive actions can non-convergent operators take?
Which factors can be attributed to effective take-up of quad play? Market share, fibre deployment and homepass, TV offers, exclusive content – or is it just about bundling discounts? What discount levels are we talking about?
Based on international facts and best practice, what would tefficient recommend? Taking local conditions, operator strategy and market position into account.
Commissioned by two operators.
It’s been more than two years since the June 2012 launch of Verizon’s shared data plan which took out all other Verizon postpaid plans at one go. From this point on, new Verizon customers (or prolonging customers) had to take the Share Everything plan (later renamed More Everything). The initiative was Verizon’s final attempt to get rid of unlimited data and make usage-based data monetisation a reality.
Since the standard US postpaid contract is running for 24 months, we should after two years consequently see a 100% adoption of Share/More Everything within Verizon’s postpaid accounts? No, it is 55%.
Verizon’s primary competitor, AT&T, launched their shared data plan, Mobile Share, in August 2012. Unlike Verizon, they kept other postpaid plans available to begin with. More than one year later, in October 2013, Mobile Share was eventually made the only plan. AT&T reports that 56% of their postpaid SIMs are on Mobile Share. Still not 100%.
In its Q2 reporting of yesterday, AT&T says that 80% of postpaid smartphone subscribers are on usage-based data plans. Leaving 20% of smartphone subscribers (plus a bunch of data-only subscribers – no reporting for that segment) that still are unlimited.
Verizon and AT&T’s principal method to convince customers to let go of their unlimited plans has been equipment subsidy: You wouldn’t get any unless you go for the new plans.
But T-Mobile’s disruption of the subsidy model – later embraced by AT&T and (somewhat reluctantly) implemented by Verizon – has led to US customers shifting away from subsidy, instead going for installment plans or BYOD. And with these models, customers can easier hold onto their grandfathered unlimited data plans.
Analysis and Go-to-market, 2014
Download the analysis, commissioned by Comptel 
and published 2 June 2014 here.
The reporting of Telefónica, PT and Orange show that quad-play is a hit in Spain, Portugal and France. Vodafone used 14,9 billion EUR to acquire cablecos in Germany and Spain – to enable quad.
Operators need to be realistic about the positives quad-play can bring and use facts to spot best practice. tefficient’s framework provides a great start if entering quad – or facing competition that do.
At tefficient, we’ve built a comprehensive before/after analysis framework of the results operators have achieved when transforming their offers from single-service to quad-play.
There are many indications that quad-play is about to become the new European standard: Telekom will go quad-play in Germany during 2014; Vodafone has acquired Kabel Deutschland and Ono to go beyond mobile-only; TeliaSonera reorganised 1 April to converge fixed and mobile on a national basis.
Quad is propagating over Europe with south-westerly winds. The map above shows the wind direction: From Portugal, Spain and France towards Central and North Europe.
The first step towards true quad is often what we call light quad – a discount that a customer gets if he or she adds mobile to triple-play. In this case, it’s typically not very prominent in operator’s marketing, there’s typically no product brand name, and far from the straight-forward pitch of true quad operators.
The current position of European operators – who have quad capability – is seen in our quad pyramid above. The arrows indicate operators that are seen to take action to move upwards.
Through our before/after analysis, we’ve spotted several very interesting outcomes – best as well as worst practices. These can be used to either prepare your own journey into quad – or understand how to best defend against quad-capable competitors.
Analysis & Consulting, 2014
How have mobile operators introduced single- and multi-user shared plans in USA, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Canada and the UK? Which business results have operators achieved and how has competition reacted? Which modifications have been necessary and when? Can the same customer loyalty effects be achieved without the heavy implementation of multi-user shared plans? Which defensive actions have proven to be most successful?
Based on these international facts and best practice, what would tefficient recommend? Taking local conditions, operator strategy and market position into account.
Commissioned twice by two different operators.
Analysis & Go-to-market, 2013
How are mobile operators monetising mobile data in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark – and in a few other international markets? Which changes have operators made to their monetisation models during the past years? How have these changes affected business results and how has competition responded?
Based on these international facts and best practice, what would tefficient recommend when it comes to e.g. volume caps, overage policy, throughput tiers and shared plans? Taking local conditions, operator strategy and market position into account.
Commissioned by an operator.
Analysis & Consulting, 2013
Which operators in the world have advanced the furthest in incorporating operator Wi-Fi – based on hotspots and/or homespots – into a solution to offload mobile data and enhance the mobility of Wi-Fi-only devices? Which are their figures? What are the strategies and drivers behind? How has monetisation been solved? Are strategies different for telcos, cellcos and cablecos?
How should we apply what’s happening elsewhere onto our local competitive context? What should we be prepared for?
tefficient was asked to prepare and faciliate a workshop – focusing on these questions – for key stakeholders within an international operator group.
