a little article from The Wall Street Urinal:
March 29, 2000
CompleTel Hopes To Carve Out Niche Amid Telecoms Giants
Dow Jones Newswires
PARIS -- CompleTel Europe NV (CLTL), the telecommunications group that listed simultaneously
on the Paris stock market and Nasdaq earlier this week, believes there is room for it in a market still
dominated by giants like France Telecom (FTE) and Deutsche Telekom (DT).
Specifically, CompleTel asserts that its strategy of sticking to providing local voice, data and Internet
services to business will help it carve out a niche in the highly competitive market.
"The next two years are going to be exciting in the European telecoms market," said the group's Chief
Executive William Pearson, speaking at a press conference in Paris Wednesday.
Paris-based CompleTel says it expects revenues - currently just $3 million a year - to balloon this
year as the telecoms minnow expands its services into a clutch of new cities in France and Germany.
Pearson argues the European market for so-called competitive local exchange carriers, or CLECs -
the companies that provide citywide local voice, data and Internet hook-ups - is untapped compared
with the more developed U.S. market.
"There are 66 CLECs in New York State alone, while there are only twenty spread out over all of
Europe," he said.
Currently, 70% of CompleTel's revenues come from the two Internet service providers, or ISPs, it
bought last year - London-based Web International and ASI, based in the southern French town of
Lyon.
As the group expands its local hook-up services, that figure should come down. This week's initial
public offering in Paris raised EUR450 million which the company plans to spend on building up its
local networks and strengthening its Internet services.
CompleTel already operates in six cities in France and four in Germany. It plans to add four more
French cities by next year, applying for new licenses that would give it access to local lines in eighteen
of France's twenty-two regions. |
