Kpn Evaluating New Mvnos Setups

[Triband81]

E-Plus-Mutter KPN pr?ft Billigmarken in ?sterreich und Schweiz

07.03.2006, 09:44


Der niederl?ndische Ex-Monopolist KPN, Konzernmutter des drittgr??ten, deutschen Mobilfunknetzbetreibers E-Plus, denkt ?ber einen Start von Mobilfunk-Billigmarken in ?sterreich und der Schweiz nach. "Das erfolgreiche Gesch?ftsmodell von E-Plus eignet sich vielleicht zur Einf?hrung in anderen deutschsprachigen L?ndern", sagte KPN-Vorstandschef Ad Scheepbouwer dem niederl?ndischen Magazin Effekt. E-Plus hatte im letzten Sommer mit einer Vielzahl an Tochterunternehmen und eigenen Marken f?r einen bislang beispiellosen Preiskampf und ordentlich Bewegung im deutschen Mobilfunkmarkt gesorgt. So brachte das Unternehmen aus D?sseldorf etwa den Prepaid-Discounter simyo, das Flatrate-Angebot Base und eine Prepaidkarte f?r in Deutschland lebende T?rken namens Ay Yildiz an den Start.

KPN ist bislang noch nicht in den Alpenl?ndern auf dem Markt. Die Financial Times Deutschland (FTD) zitiert aber Spekulationen, wonach der niederl?ndische Konzern tele.ring in ?sterreich kaufen k?nnte, sofern die geplante ?bernahme durch T-Mobile platzen w?rde.

E-Plus hat kein konkretes Gewinnziel

Zum Gesch?ft der deutschen Tochter sagte Scheepbouwer, dass E-Plus trotz 10,7 Millionen Kunden noch Verluste schreibt. Diese k?men vor allem durch Abschreibungen auf Lizenzen zu Stande. Es gebe bislang aber kein konkretes Ziel, bis wann E-Plus einen Gewinn erzielen muss.

Translation:

The former Dutch telecommunications monopoly and parent company of E-Plus Germany, KPN, is considering entering the Austrian and the Swiss markets with prepaid MVNOs. "The successful E-Plus business model may also be worth implementing in other German-speaking countries", KPN CEO Ad Scheepbouwer told the Dutch magazine "Effekt". E-Plus added numerous subsidiaries to its brand range last summer which led to an as of yet unsurpassed string of price drops heating up the competition throughout the German wireless market. They did this by introducing the prepaid MVNO simyo, the monthly BASE Flatrate offer and the special prepaid Ay Yildiz offer for Turkish customers living in Germany which have focused much of the attention on E-Plus.

KPN has yet to enter the Austrian and Swiss wireless markets. The Financial Times Deutschland has quoted rumors that KPN may make an offer for tele.ring in Austria should the proposed acquisition by T-Mobile fall through. When asked about E-Plus' financial status, Scheepbouwer stated that the German subsidiary is still in the red despite having 10.7 million customers making it the 3rd largest provider in Germany. The financial shortfall is being caused by high expenses that resulted out of the UMTS license acquisitions 6 years ago and general writeoffs on E-Plus' licenses. There is no definitive date that has been set for E-Plus to make a profit.

Source:
http://www.teltarif.de/arch/2006/kw10/s20760.html

[Effendi]

Wow, E-Plus is quite an "old" company I thought they were deep in the green and not in red anymore... not good for them... Anyway it's very good if new MVNOs by KPN will enter the Austrian and Swiss market... but since I can assure you that in Switzerland they DON'T speak German but a very strange language of their own, why doesn't KPN enter in Italy as well? At least in S?d Tirol they speak good German!

[Triband81]

Hehe well who would they buy in Italy? The candidate would be WIND. Swiss German isn't that hard to understand if you can get the general sense of a conversation by picking up keywords. What really throws most German speakers when hearing Swiss German is the strange sentence structure that is used from time to time.

[Effendi]

I don't speak German but I know quite a lot of words and can understand some easy sentences, but when I was in Z?rich it really seemed they were speaking a total different language, with very strange pronunciation. I was hosted by a friend from Dresden who has been living there in Z?rich for 1,5 years and he still has some problems understanding them well!

Anyway, back to KPN, I hoped they could buy Wind, but then the Egyptian Sawris just bought it, so no chance to become Dutch for my favourite Italian operator (now people here are afraid Wind will become part of Hamas! Quite absurd...), but Wind and KPN/E-Plus always have been quite "close" in roaming relations and it would be nice to see a Simyo/Base here as well, on Wind network.

[Triband81]

Would there have to be some regulatory changes in order for such setups to be instituted?

[Effendi]

In Italy there are talkings about introducing MVNOs, but as usual here, things go slowly... they talk about 2008, not before, I don't know why, I fear we'll be the last country in Europe with MVNOs...