Competition
The telecommunications industry is highly competitive. Competition in the
telecommunications industry is based upon price, customer service, network
quality, value-added services and customer relationships. We compete or will
compete primarily with the dominant incumbent telecommunications carriers, which
generally offer the full range of voice, data and other value-added services and
benefit from their history as incumbent providers. The dominant incumbent in each
country generally has certain competitive advantages over other operators
(including us) due to its established market presence, fully deployed networks,
greater resources, and control over its end to end network.
We compete or expect to compete with all incumbents in the countries in
which we operate, including Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, Telefonica,
Portugal Telecom and SwissCom.
We also will compete with all providers who will provide local loop access
through wireless local loop and DSL. Access to wireless local loop spectrum and
to copper twisted pair wire is a scarce resource and we may not be able to
obtain access to either in the markets we wish to enter. In addition, some
providers have extensive fiber optic networks in Europe and are expanding their
fiber optic networks. We will also compete against other alternative
telecommunication providers, including other providers of fiber optic networks
and cable companies. In addition to competition from existing incumbent
telecommunications providers and alternative telecommunications carriers,
including competing services for wireless local loop and DSL, we expect to face
competition from European cable television systems, satellite service providers
and other wireless technology operators that are beginning to offer broadband
telecommunications services to business customers. |
