💾 Archived View for gmi.noulin.net › mobileNews › 4772.gmi captured on 2024-08-25 at 06:46:47. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2024-05-10)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
2013-07-01 11:21:38
Two deals this week illustrate only some of the problems besetting Europe s telecoms companies
FOURTEEN years ago Vodafone, a British mobile-phone operator, swooped on Mannesmann of Germany. One of the grand names of the country s corporate scene, it eventually succumbed for 112 billion ($183 billion) in shares. Vodafone s latest German purchase, announced on June 24th, of Kabel Deutschland, the country s biggest cable-television company, for which it will pay 7.7 billion ($10 billion) in cash, owes more to distress than to daring. Like another, smaller acquisition on the same day the purchase of the Irish business of Spain s Telef nica for 780m by Three, owned by Hong Kong s Hutchison Whampoa the deal reflects the strife that bedevils European telecoms companies.
The Irish transaction may bring a little balm to two familiar sources of pain. First, it will fractionally ease Telef nica s debt, which the firm hopes to cut to 47 billion by the end of the year. Second, it will make one of Europe s mobile-telecoms markets less crowded. Most, however small, have four contestants. Regulators have sought to keep it that way but if the watchdogs let the purchase in Ireland through, it will reduce the field of four there by one. A similar agreement by Three in Austria in February 2012 to buy the local business of Orange, France Telecom s brand, took almost a year to be approved, after scrutiny by the European Commission.
The German deal illustrates a newer difficulty: telecoms and cable companies are invading each other s territory. Whether attacking or defending, companies are cutting prices and making acquisitions. In France last year Iliad, an upstart internet-service provider, launched Free, an ultra-cheap mobile-phone service, setting off a price war. In Britain BT, the old fixed-line incumbent and a leading broadband supplier, is entering sports television, having bought the local business of ESPN, an American broadcaster. It is thus both challenging and defending itself against BSkyB, the country s biggest pay-TV company, which is trying to lure broadband customers away from BT.
How this turf war is fought varies from one country to another. But Robin Bienenstock of Sanford C. Bernstein, a research firm, thinks that mobile specialists such as Vodafone look especially vulnerable. Fixed-line incumbents, which in most countries offer mobile services as well as broadband, see cable companies attacking their broadband business. To keep their customers, Ms Bienenstock explains, they give a bit on wireless which hurts the mobile operators.
Mobile companies find it hard to fight back, not least because they lack their own fast broadband networks and so have no choice but to rent from the incumbents. Though the price is regulated, it can be dear. For example, the rate recently set for fibre by the Spanish regulator 20 per connection per month means the economics are impossible for a renter , Ms Bienenstock says. And to make the squeeze worse, Liberty Global, an American-owned cable company with operations in several European countries, has said that it is interested in expanding its mobile services too.
In Germany, its biggest market, Vodafone already had its own broadband network with about 3m customers, as well as an agreement to serve others using Deutsche Telekom s wires (which will continue). However, Deutsche Telekom, the biggest provider of both broadband and mobile services, has been rolling out high-speed fibre. And both Kabel Deutschland and its rival, the German arm of Liberty Global, have been adding high-speed broadband, and winning customers. Buying Kabel Deutschland was the answer for Vodafone, especially since Liberty was interested in buying it too. (Germany s cartel office has said that a takeover by Liberty would be more troublesome.)
If only, European telecoms operators sigh, our troubles ended there. Their services are in demand as never before, as data flood through mobile and broadband networks. But prices have been driven down not just by recession and competition but also by regulation. National regulators have made operators cut the mobile termination rates (MTRs) they charge for connecting calls made to their phones from other operators , and their broadband access fees. Even without the cuts in MTRs, says James Barford of Enders Analysis, another research firm, mobile-service revenues would have fallen by 3.8% in the year to March. With them, they dropped by 8.6% (see chart).
On top of this, the commission has whittled away at the roaming fees that Europeans pay to use their mobile phones in other EU countries. The next cut is due on July 1st, and Neelie Kroes, the commissioner responsible, wants eventually to abolish them. Intense competition and regulatory pressure mean that European consumers enjoy much lower prices than Americans do. But operators complain that the squeeze is leaving them short of money to invest in new technology.
Having been streets ahead of America in building 3G networks, Europe is far behind in installing the next generation. Several operators wrote recently to Jos Manuel Barroso, the commission s president, to plead for a more benign regulatory regime. Ms Kroes, who says she is as keen on investment in new technology as she is on cutting prices, wants operators to have a passport to operate anywhere in the EU presumably to give them pan-European scale but it is not yet clear how this might work. In any case, operators already rent network space in countries where they do not have their own.
Transatlantic connection
All of this has operators looking enviously across the Atlantic. America s telecoms markets are dominated by AT&T and Verizon (on the mobile side, through Verizon Wireless, of which Vodafone owns 45%); they have plenty of the fixed broadband market too, though they share it with cable-TV companies. The two giants have spirited rivals, in the shape of MetroPCS, recently acquired by Deutsche Telekom s American mobile arm, and Sprint, likely to be bought soon by Softbank, of Japan, but these are much smaller than the big two. The big two also have the best spectrum for 4G networks, in which they have invested heavily and for which they can charge much more.
The Americans, meanwhile, have been looking back at Europe, musing that it needs their expertise. AT&T is said to have asked the Spanish government how it would regard an approach for Telef nica. A European executive says that American companies have also made polite inquiries (but no formal offers) elsewhere. Other non-Europeans could also be agents of consolidation. Hutchison Whampoa is keen to buy where it can. Last year Am rica M vil, a Mexican telecoms company, bought stakes in KPN, a struggling Dutch operator, and Telekom Austria. But shares in both have since performed horribly. Last month KPN raised 3 billion in a rights issue, after the Netherlands auction of 4G spectrum proved unexpectedly expensive. It is still a bit early for anyone to make a fortune in this business.