Miles
15-05-2006, 10:39 AM
T-Mobile Chief Executive Rene Obermann is reported to have told a German newspaper on Saturday that the operator has signed up almost 1m customers to it's @Home service in just four months since launch. @Home is T-Mobile's homezone service, which allows customers to make calls or use the 3G network for data services at discounted rates when in the home. Comment: This is fantastic growth for T-Mobile. In the last set of results T-Mobile announced 515,000 @Home subscribers at the end of March 2006. This new announcement means it has almost doubled its customer base in six weeks. The original target for @Home was 1m customers by the end of 2006, and it seems it has managed to reach this in just four months since launch.
Although T-Mobile has launched its homezone offering years after the competing Genion offer by O2, T-Mobile seems to be on a roll. In just over three months it managed to build up a homezone subscriber base totalling well over a quarter that of Genion, which now stands at 3.7m in Germany.
The German market has seen aggressive fixed-mobile substitution (FMS) activity by the operators, with homezone services also launched by Vodafone (ZuHause, which is estimated to have in excess of 500,000 customers) and O2's very successful Genion service.
However, it is not entirely clear whether T-Mobile Germany's homezone offering is having the intended effect. Just last week, Deutsche Telekom reported Q1 2006 figures for T-Mobile Germany. The division reported a mere 284,000 net additions, compared to 330,000 for O2 and 694,000 for E-Plus. T-Mobile Germany's revenues declined by 3.4%, EBITDA by 4.2% and operating free cashflow by 9.5%. ARPUs declined by 13%, reflecting the pricing pressures these kinds of offerings can have on an existing customer base.
Read more (http://www.ovum.com/news/euronews.asp?id=4331)
Although T-Mobile has launched its homezone offering years after the competing Genion offer by O2, T-Mobile seems to be on a roll. In just over three months it managed to build up a homezone subscriber base totalling well over a quarter that of Genion, which now stands at 3.7m in Germany.
The German market has seen aggressive fixed-mobile substitution (FMS) activity by the operators, with homezone services also launched by Vodafone (ZuHause, which is estimated to have in excess of 500,000 customers) and O2's very successful Genion service.
However, it is not entirely clear whether T-Mobile Germany's homezone offering is having the intended effect. Just last week, Deutsche Telekom reported Q1 2006 figures for T-Mobile Germany. The division reported a mere 284,000 net additions, compared to 330,000 for O2 and 694,000 for E-Plus. T-Mobile Germany's revenues declined by 3.4%, EBITDA by 4.2% and operating free cashflow by 9.5%. ARPUs declined by 13%, reflecting the pricing pressures these kinds of offerings can have on an existing customer base.
Read more (http://www.ovum.com/news/euronews.asp?id=4331)