Tag: quad-play

BT/EE: Huge Regulatory Headache and Trigger for European Transformation

UK Cellular: The Context

The UK is a high-penetration market (134%), and has for the most part been considered a high-competition one, with 5 MNOs and numerous resellers/MVNOs. However, since the Free.fr and T-Mobile USA price disruptions, the UK has ceased to be one of the cheaper markets among rich countries and now seems a little expensive by French standards, while the EE joint venture effectively means a move down from 5 operators to 4. There has been considerable concern that a price disruption was in the offing since BT acquired 2.6GHz spectrum, perhaps via a “Free-style” BT deployment, or alternatively via BT leasing the spectrum to a third party, possibly Virgin Media or TalkTalk. However, it is not as obvious that there is a big target for price disruption as it was in France pre-Free or the US pre-T-Mobile, as Figure 1 shows. The UK operators are only slightly dearer than the French average, with one exception, and the market is more competitive.

Figure 1: The UK is a slightly dearer cellular market than France

Source: STL Partners, themobileworld.com

The following chart summarises the current status of the operators.

Figure 2: UK mobile market overview, 2012-2014

Source: Company Accounts, STL Partners analysis

One reason to pick EE over O2 is immediately clear – EE has substantially better ARPU, is increasing it, and is at least holding onto customers. A deeper look into the company shows that the 4G network is just recruiting customers fast enough to compensate for churn away from the two legacy networks. Overall, the market is just growing.

Figure 3: UK cellular subscriber growth, 2012-2014

Source: Company Accounts, STL Partners analysis

O2 is the cheapest of the four 4G operators and is discounting hard to win share. Meanwhile, Vodafone UK starts to look like a squeezed third operator, losing customers and ARPU at the same time, and fourth operator 3UK looks remarkably strong. In terms of profitability, Figure 4 shows that Vodafone is just managing to hold its margins, while O2 is growing at constant margins, EE is improving its margins, and 3UK is powering ahead, improving its margins, ARPU, and subscriber base at the same time.

Figure 4: 3UK is a remarkably strong fourth operator

Source: Company Accounts, STL Partners analysis

 

  • UK Cellular: The Context
  • Meanwhile, in the Retail ISP Market
  • The Business Case for BT+EE
  • An affordable deal?
  • Valuation and leverage
  • Synergy: operational cost savings
  • Synergy: marketing, customer data and cross-sales
  • Synergy: quad-play revenue
  • Can a BT-EE merger be acceptable to the Regulator?
  • The Spectrum Position
  • The Vertical Integration Problem
  • The Move towards Convergence and the Fixed Squeeze Potential Scenarios
  • Conclusion: big bets, tests, and signals
  • BT: betting big
  • The market: three big decisions
  • The regulator and the regulatory environment: a big test
  • Sending important signals

 

  • Figure 1: The UK is a slightly dearer cellular market than France
  • Figure 2: UK mobile market overview, 2012-2014
  • Figure 3: UK cellular subscriber growth, 2012-2014
  • Figure 4: 3UK is a remarkably strong fourth operator
  • Figure 5: UK consumer wireline overview
  • Figure 6: FTTC is mostly benefiting the “major independent” ISPs
  • Figure 7: BT Sport has peaked as a driver of broadband net-adds, but the football rights bills keep coming
  • Figure 8: Content costs are eating around 70% of wholesale fibre revenue at BT
  • Figure 9: BT Sport’s impact on its market valuation
  • Figure 10: BT-EE would blow through the 2013 regulatory cap on spectrum allocations, but not the proposed cap post-2.3/3.4GHz auctions
  • Figure 11: Although BT-EE is just compliant with the 2.3/3.4GHz cap, it looks suspiciously dominant
  • Figure 12: Fibre-rich MNOs break away from the herd of mediocrity in Europe Figure 13: Vodafone – light on fibre across the EU

Full Article: Hidden Potential, France Telecom

France Telecom is showing how to be a classic telco in strange times, with an asset-light take on service integration..

FT is perhaps the archetypal traditional PTT; still part-nationalised, with a dominant position in fixed-line, ISP, and mobile markets at home. During the .com boom, the carrier expanded heavily and ran into debt (it didn’t help that the government hit it up for some cash to meet the requirements of joining the Euro). Meanwhile, the fixed-line voice market began a steady slide as the first alt.telcos, VoIP, and fixed-mobile substitution began to bite. Although the French government was slower than some to take regulatory action, eventually the new regulator ARCEP began to hammer at the de facto monopoly.

So, what did they do about it?

FT’s acquisitions turned out to be better deals than they looked in the smouldering aftermath. Among other things, they had given the company one of the strongest brands in the industry, Orange, a strong ISP in France (Wanadoo), and stakes in global cable backbones and other world-wide presence that permitted them to build strong businesses in bulk IP networking (Opentransit) and enterprise VPNs (Equant). More recently, the company has decided to go all the way, rolling the entire consumer side into Orange.

In terms of a business model, F Tel/Orange is very keen on bundling. As an integrated full-service carrier, it can offer quad-play in France. Interestingly, it’s trying to take advantage of industry horizontalisation to expand this vertically integrated model elsewhere; in the UK, Orange Broadband is providing PSTN and DSL service over Openreach’s wires through local-loop unbundling, and selling GSM/UMTS mobile service along with it as part of a “free broadband? offer. Telco 2.0 readers are of course well aware that “free broadband? really means “compulsory old technology?.

This is an important issue; if it is true that integration means greater market power, there is a lot of money waiting for anyone who can successfully lash disparate elements of the Telco 2.0 world into a virtual carrier. But so far, fancy MVNOs are a notable failure –  you know what we thought at first about Blyk, and Amp’d Mobile crashed and burned, as did ESPN Mobile and Easymobile before them.

The UK’s structural separation model, permitting LLU, means that Orange UK has become an integrated carrier without needing to spend all that money; perhaps not the result Ofcom was aiming for. At the same time, other FT divisions are using the metro-Ethernet lines Orange UK has installed to backhaul its high-traffic cells to serve corporate customers, from behind the Orange name as “Orange Business Services?.

In France, meanwhile, FT is offering IPTV and carrier-VoIP over its DSL network, in a bid to replace the vanishing economic rents from its PSTN business with new service revenues. The key to this effort is the Livebox, the WLAN router/modem/set-top box that is distributed to all subscribers.