Multi-play strategies are far from new in Europe's communications market. Fixed operators have been offering triple-play plans including broadband, TV and home phone services for a number of years. A more recent trend has been to tag on mobile services to create so-called quadruple-play bundles, while mobile operators have also been buying or leasing fixed services to create their own fixed-mobile bundles.
Large, integrated and mostly incumbent operators have typically been first to offer quad-play plans for obvious reasons, but competitors have followed suit in a number of markets including France and Spain. Now, quad-play seems to be a strategy of leading mobile operators across Europe, as they see the ability to offer home broadband and TV services along with LTE plans as key for their future survival. Some operators such as in Portugal also now offer so-called quintuple-plans.
In our latest special report, we have taken a look at five leading quad-play markets in Western Europe and ranked them based on data provided by Pyramid Research for the five markets as of the end of 2014. The markets in order of ranking by household penetration of quad-play bundles are France, Portugal, Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands.
It should be noted here that Pyramid Research does not cover all European markets and there could be markets where FMC coverage is higher than in the Netherlands, for example. The research firm also points out that while quad-play and FMC take-up tends to be stronger in Western Europe than in other regions, Poland is one country in Central and Eastern Europe with good FMC adoption.
Although the markets are ranked in terms of the percentage of households with quad-play bundles, a deeper dive into the data reveals other strengths and drivers that could impact a market's ranking if looked at in different ways.--Anne
For further details and clarifications for each of the five leading markets, click here to read our special report.