Top-10 IPTV Groups: growth opportunities despite low broadband penetration

In 2009, MII China group continued to have the largest subscriber base worldwide followed by Verizon, France Télécom and AT&T. These top-4 companies have remained in their positions since 2008 as their subscriber bases are clearly far ahead of the rest of the pack. As a group, the top-4 recorded over 12.8m IPTV subscriptions in 2009 representing 67% of the total top-10 base.

As shown in Tab. 1, ranking movements took place below the 5th place, where most of the groups’ subscriber bases are close in range, so that a few thousands of customer additions may trigger shift in rankings. In 2009, Deutsche Telekom grabbed the 5th position moving 5 notches up from 10th place from the previous year. The impact of this change was experienced by Vivendi (6th), PCCW (9th) and Chunghwa Telecom (10th) with each dropping 1, 3 and 1 ranks down, respectively. For their part, Iliad (7th) and Telefónica (8th) kept their previous year’s ranks. More...

Eastern European telecom markets driven by mobile and data

This article discusses the Eastern European telecommunications market in 2008, in particular the top-10 groups of the respective telecommunications sector, i.e. fixed telephony, mobile and datacom sectors. The rankings of the operators were based on the net revenues instead on published turnover. This article also provides forecast regarding the expected rankings for 2009.

Note: the operators' positions are described in terms of "net revenues" rather than of "turnover", in order to allow more significant comparisons regarding their real activity in telecommunications services. Practically, it means that expenses such as access charges, outgoing settlements and the like, are subtracted from gross revenues. With this method, double counting is avoided and the sum of the companies’ net revenues equal to the total market value. Please note also that participations over 50% are fully consolidated within the group owning the participation, whereas participations under or equal to 50% are not consolidated at all. More...

Consolidation in the mobile industry: a starting trend?

As mobile markets go beyond subscriber saturation levels, mobile operators are looking for ways to remain competitive in terms of cost while at the same time to at least retain or indeed increase their share of the market. One of the ways mobile operators may be able to achieve these goals is quite simply through mergers and acquisitions, thus consolidating market share while creating synergies and reducing costs. It is therefore probably not surprising that in 2009 mobile operators announced and carried out plans for consolidation.

This article focuses mainly on the potential impact and reaction to the proposed merger between Orange and T-Mobile in the UK and briefly discusses the merger of Hutchison Telecommunications and Vodafone in Australia. More...

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