Steady decline in fixed telephony channels due to fixed-to-mobile substitution

Germany (SANEPR.com) April 14, 2009 -- According to the latest release of one InfoCom’s popular Monitoring Services — Fixed Line Telephony, on average, the fixed telephony penetration in Western Europe remained virtually unchanged at 55% (3Q08, YoY). In markets such as France, Germany and Italy, the expansion of VoIP was able to offset the decrease in traditional fixed line connections, resulting in a slight increase of the number of total channels. However, for other markets, the even significant uptake of VoIP services was not enough to offset the decline of fixed line connections. For instance, in the Netherlands and Denmark, which had already a significant VoIP share of 32.5% and 15.0% of the total telephony channels, the fixed telephony channels are decreasing of 1.4% and 6.6% respectively. For the majority of markets in Western Europe, the continuous decline in fixed telephony channels is still attributed to the strong fixed-to-mobile substitution effect as VoIP services have a relatively small impact yet.

In Eastern Europe, the total number of fixed telephony channels slightly increased by less than 1%. Stagnation in the fixed telephony market could largely be attributed to the fixed-to-mobile substitution effect and the limited access competition in the fixed market segment. Among the markets monitored, Slovenia experienced the largest decrease in fixed telephony channels with about 10% followed by Hungary and Czech Republic with about 4% decrease. The introduction of VoIP in the market was not enough to offset the stagnating fixed line market in the countries monitored. To date, incumbents still largely dominate the fixed telephony sector in their respective home markets despite market liberalisation. In all countries monitored — with only a couple of exceptions — the incumbent market share ranges between 70% and virtually 100%.

About Fixed Telephony Quarterly Monitoring: Fixed Telephony Quarterly Monitoring is currently available on a yearly subscription basis. It provides a large amount of indicators — among which Total channels and market shares by carrier, ULL with shares and fully unbundled part, connections including DSL and cable modem, split between POTS and ISDN connections, split between DSL and cable modem; all figures broken down by carrier — for a large number of countries.
Fixed Telephony Quarterly Monitoring is only one of several Quarterly Monitoring Services that InfoCom provides. To know more, please contact us.

About InfoCom — InfoCom GmbH is a market research and consultancy company with over 20 years experience providing strategic analyses and planning assistance to stakeholders in the telecommunications, IT and multimedia industries. InfoCom GmbH’s independent and fact-based analyses highlight trends and opportunities, supporting decision makers to understand market dynamics in order to improve their competitive advantage.
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