💾 Archived View for gmi.noulin.net › mobileNews › 5558.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 05:18:22. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2021-12-03)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
2015-08-21 08:40:04
The EU s new competition chief will have to rule on a wave of mergers
Aug 22nd 2015 | MILAN AND PARIS
WHEN plans to merge Wind and 3 Italia, the third- and fourth-largest mobile
operators in Italy, were announced on August 6th their rivals breathed a sigh
of relief. Italian operators revenues from mobile services have fallen by 40%
since 2011, according to GSMA, a global trade association. That has made them
skimp on investment. Though half of Italians have a smartphone, fewer than one
in ten has access to speedy 4G services. A weak domestic economy had
something to do with this, but so did the industry structure, some argue: too
many operators wooing price-sensitive customers the only way they could.
If approved by regulators, the Italian job will be the latest in a series of
deals that are consolidating Europe s mobile market. One by one, countries are
switching from having four principal operators ones that own their cell towers
and radio spectrum to just three (see map). In 2012 European Union regulators
let the Austrian subsidiary of 3 Italia s parent, Hutchison Whampoa, buy the
Austrian operations of Orange of France. Telef nica of Spain bought the German
mobile business of KPN of the Netherlands, to combine it with its own, and
Hutchison bought Telef nica s in Ireland. Now, Telenor of Norway and
TeliaSonera of Sweden want to merge their Danish subsidiaries; and Hutchison,
owner of Three in Britain, plans to buy Telef nica s subsidiary there, O2.
Repeated attempts to merge mobile operators in France have failed, but Spain
could be next: its number-four operator, TeliaSonera s Yoigo, has been on sale
for a while.
Besides mobile operators merging among themselves, another form of
consolidation is going on in which mobile firms combine with fixed-line
operators. Most recently BT, Britain s fixed-line incumbent, has proposed
buying a mobile operator, EE, from its parents, Deutsche Telekom and Orange.
Vodafone, another British mobile operator, is understood to be talking to
Liberty Global, a cable company.
The way to make all these mergers work, says Wolfgang Bock of the Boston
Consulting Group, is to take out costs while keeping prices constant (and thus
customers content). The savings can then be used to invest in improving the
networks. The EU s competition regulators have, of late, accepted this
rationale, even though for a long time they had believed that strong
competition, among at least four firms, would spur innovation and investment,
not constrain them, while keeping prices down. Many national authorities still
think that way.
What has changed the climate at the EU s headquarters in Brussels is a feeling
that rampant competition has given consumers cheap prices, but has left its
telecoms companies weak. This worries them at a time when powerful American
firms seem to be dominating the brave new digital world. Another concern is
that Europe is being slow to roll out fast mobile broadband, and the savings
from mergers could pay for it to be speeded up.
Pundits are divided over whether or not the first merger, in Austria,
demonstrates the merits of consolidation. For Matthew Bloxham of GSMA, it does.
Mobile-broadband speeds and 4G coverage have increased since the merger, he
says, while average spending per user has stayed relatively constant.
Significant growth in data usage has been offset by reductions in the cost per
megabyte.
Antonios Drossos of Rewheel, a Finnish consulting firm, sees things
differently. His firm analysed the prices customers paid in Austria and found
some had risen by as much as 80% since the merger. In any event, he says,
customers should be getting more for less: the cost of mobile gigabytes has
plummeted as operators get more spectrum, pay much less for network equipment
and build more cells. The question is how much better a deal they would be
offered now if a fourth operator were still in the market. Austria s national
competition regulator, which opposed the deal three years ago, will be
releasing a new assessment this autumn.
More important, however, will be the view taken on the various proposed mergers
by the EU s new competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager. In office since
November, she has yet to rule on a merger between two mobile operators. When
she approved the takeover of a Spanish fixed-line firm, Jazztel, by a mobile
firm, Orange, she imposed heavier conditions to preserve competition than had
been expected. In her public comments so far she has sounded disinclined to buy
the argument that competition hinders investment.
So, when commission staff return from their summer break next month, industry
executives will be waiting to see what she does about the proposed combinations
of mobile operators in Italy, Britain and Denmark. Will she move the dial
further back towards preserving competition?
The first case she will have to rule on is the one in Denmark, her home
country. That case may not prove a reliable template for the other decisions.
It would result in a greater degree of concentration than either the Italian or
the British merger, giving the new firm 45% of a market in which the new third
operator is tiny. And she may be wary of attracting the ire of fellow Danes by
letting prices rise. She may well let the merger through, albeit laden with
conditions to encourage new competitors. That will leave Europe s policy on
mobile mergers murkier than ever.