UnitedGlobalCom rolling out VoIP in Europe –
Re UCOMA, I am not sure if UCOMA’s voIP development for the Netherlands or Hungary were not already being developed (circuit switched platforms?), at the time UCOMA said in March it was interested in using NTOP for one or two trials.
What I am interested in is the next 6 voIP deployments UCOMA is going to undertake. That would fit the timeframe in that the Liberty Cablevision Puerto Rico voIP trial was completed, and cable telephony rolled out. UCOMA jumped its voIP deployments forward to six in August of this year.
From voip watch (blog):
1) September 14, 2004
Netherlands VoIP Wars Starting
James Enck in Eurotelcoblog has some keen insight about United Global Comunications launching in the Netherlands.
If any country is becoming the wild west when it comes to telecom, its the Netherlands. The ability for businesses and consumers to find non KPN telephony, both wired and wireless is insane there. MVNO's are sprouting up and there are multiple wireless competitors operating as well.
***************
from Eurotelcoblog:
2)
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Daiwa EuroTelcoblog No. 74: Tuesday 14th September 2004 - UPC Netherlands fires the opening shot
UnitedGlobalCom unit UPC Netherlands today launched the Dutch VoIP service which we wrote about recently (http://eurotelcoblog.blogspot.com/2004/08/daiwa-eurotelcoblog-no_10.html) (BELOW), and unveiled some specifics. Monthly subscription to the service is said in the press release to be "almost 50% less than" KPN's basic subscription (which is EUR15.26), with per minute calls priced 10 - 15% cheaper. The launch will initially be confined to Amsterdam and Rotterdam, expanding to the rest of the country early next year. Also, as previously announced, UPC will increase bandwidth for cable modem subscribers significantly from 1st October, with the top range product moving up to 8Mbps.
Also in the offing for October is a commercial trial of a 30Mbps cable modem product, followed by commercial launch, as well as a separate trial of a 50Mbps solution in Amsterdam. This latter development may have been prompted by some of the municipal fiber projects we have written about in the Netherlands (http://eurotelcoblog.blogspot.com/2004/07/daiwa-eurotelcoblog-no_23.html), and we're intrigued to know what the technology behind the trial is. Cable is producing some very intriguing alternative infrastructure solutions these days, such as Pulse_LINK (http://www.pulselink.net/) which harnesses Ultra Wideband over coaxial cable to deliver 1.2Gbps downstream and 480Mbps upstream. Whatever the motives and whoever the suppliers, this announcement from UPC today of a double-punch from VoIP and bandwidth upgrades, if replicated by the other two major MSOs in the Dutch market (Essent and Casema), may represent a real hammer-blow to KPN's residential business, and underlines our rationale for an UNDERPERFORM rating.
************
3)
eurotelcoblog.blogspot.com
Tuesday, August 10, 2004
Daiwa EuroTelcoblog No. 66: Tuesday 10th August, 2004 - Cable VoIP datapoints
Yesterday, in reiterating our UNDERPERFORM rating on Dutch incumbent KPN, we cited our primary concerns as being: 1) mounting competitive pressure in the domestic mobile market; 2) the lack of clarity surrounding the company's position in the various municipal fiber projects underway in the Netherlands and; 3) the VoIP spectre from cablecos. Last night's earnings call from UnitedGlobalCom (NASDAQ: UCOMA), parent company of UPC, gave us a couple of interesting new datapoints to contemplate on the latter point:
UGC yesterday stated that its residential trial of VoIP in Rotterdam had achieved a 22% penetration rate on the service with minimal marketing. Management stated that the strength of the response had encouraged them to accelerate the rollout and expand it to new markets, relegating its switched telephony business to a care and maintenance basis. They also commented that they believe VoIP will enable UPC to be price leaders in both bundled and standalone services. Service launch is set for Q3 (when VoIP will also be launched in Hungary).
Following the encouraging experience in Rotterdam, the company has identified six additional markets for VoIP introduction over the next twelve months. The company hasn't specified which markets these are, but we would guess that good candidates would be markets where the footprint is large and/or multiple service penetration is relatively weak. Our assumption is that these markets will include Austria, France, Sweden, Belgium, Norway, and Czech Republic.
Considering that UPC Netherlands has 2.3m customers and 2.4m two-way homes passed, a 22% level of uptake across its Dutch footprint suggests something like 510k VoIP subs over time. The company has fairly low penetration of both broadband subs (15.2%) and telephony (10.3%) in its Dutch footprint, so the appeal of having a teaser like VoIP to boost multiple service penetration is a compelling one. The ratio of revenue generating units (RGUs) to customers in the Dutch market is only 1.25, versus 1.59 in Austria, where the company acknowledges that its bundling strategy has been most effective. UPC Netherlands targets this level of multiple service uptake, which suggests that in one scenario the telephony subscriber base should in fact triple to around the 510k mark, with the broadband and digital cable subscriber bases each doubling.
Bandwidth and pricing are also issues where the incumbents will come under pressure from UPC. Starting with UPC Netherlands later this year, premium broadband customers will see bandwidth go to 8Mbps (with symmetrical an option at an additional cost), and the company is bundling other services at a discount of EUR8 - 15 depending on the relevant service tier. This sort of discount level is pretty material in light of a broadband ARPU of EUR45 across Europe.
Clearly there are a lot of complex issues relating to each individual market, and the ingredients of success will vary accordingly. However, yesterday's call left little doubt that VoIP is the principal prong in the UPC bundling attack, and is expected to drive significantly higher uptake of other services, as has anecdotally been the case in the earlier deployment from Cablecom in Switzerland. For the incumbents (not just KPN alone), the important message yesterday was that the largest cable player in Europe is bullish on VoIP and believes that the technology plays to its strength in other areas. Other, smaller cable players will be encouraged by this. As we have argued previously, for many telcos, adding the missing piece (video) of their own service bundle may be relatively more costly and time-consuming. |
