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Viewing report
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Netherlands Telecommunications Report Q4 2011
Business Monitor International, Oct 2011, Pages: 92
BMI’s Q411 report on the Netherlands telecommunications market provides a comprehensive overview of the latest developments to occur within the country’s mobile, fixed-line telephony, and internet sectors. This quarter sees no further change to their forecasts, depicting how the internet user and 3G subscriber markets will develop over the next five years. However, BMI have made some further changes to their forecast for the Dutch mobile subscriber market. BMIs new forecast for the mobile market incorporates the latest subscriber data, published by the country’s three largest operators, KPN, Vodafone, and T-Mobile, for Q211. Since their last update, new data on the mobile sector have also been published by Dutch telecoms regulator OPTA. This quarter also sees further revisions to their forecasts for the fixed-line telephony sector, and for the Netherlands’ broadband subscriber market. Once again, BMIs new forecasts incorporate data from OPTA, and from leading wireline operators such as KPN, UPC, and Zesko Holding (Ziggo).
Stronger than expected customer growth in Q211 has led us to upgrade BMIs mobile subscriber forecast for the Netherlands through to 2015. In the three months to June 30, the Dutch mobile customer base grew by 2.2%. As a result, growth for the first six months of 2011 amounted to 2.9%. For 2011 as a whole, BMI now predict full-year growth of just over 6%.
Key developments in the mobile sector include the September 2011 announcement that the Dutch government was looking to reserve one-third of new wireless spectrum for new market entrants. The government plans to auction off a number of blocks of spectrum in 2012, including frequencies in the 800MHz band suitable for 4G mobile data services. The state’s move to ring fence a significant portion of the spectrum on offer is welcomed by the likes of Tele2 and local cable broadband operators – Ziggo and Liberty Global Inc’s UPC – but has reportedly angered Dutch incumbent operator KPN, which is said to be considering a legal challenge against the government’s plan. Tele2 Netherlands has already expressed an interest in bidding for 800MHz spectrum, which it sees as a way of providing 4G services based on LTE services, in competition against the established mobile network operators.
Meanwhile, the latest regulatory data show that the Dutch broadband market had 6.1mn fixed connections at the end of June 2011. Similar figures were not available for mobile broadband connections at the time of writing. However, BMI estimates that the number of dedicated mobile broadband connections increased to around 824,000 at the end of H111. By the end of 2011, BMI now expects the Netherlands to have almost 7.35mn broadband connections, reflecting full-year growth of 4.4%. In June 2011, OPTA ruled that domestic cable operators UPC and Ziggo would not have to open up their networks to rivals, as a result of the rapid pace of development in the market. The regulator believes that the consumer markets for fixed telephony, internet access and television are developing favourably. It therefore does not see the need to push for the introduction of wholesale access to the cable networks of UPC and Ziggo.
The Netherlands has risen from fifth to third position in BMI’s latest set of Business Environment Ratings for Western Europe. This quarter sees the country’s Telecoms Rating increase from 65.6 to 67, an increase that is largely due to a stronger performance in the Country Rewards category. The Netherlands continues to score above the regional average in all the categories evaluated by BMI.
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