Consolidation has arrived in Austria, where Hutchison Austria announced it will buy Orange Austria and then sell a bit of it on to Telekom Austria. Is that too many Austria’s?
Once Hutch has got its hands on Orange, Telekom Austria will then pay Hutch EUR 390 million for Orange’s YESSSS! brand and network, including spectrum and its network infrastructure, as well as intellectual property rights to the ONE brand.
Everything needs regulatory approval, but if it goes through we will see the 740,000 subscribers on Orange’s YESSS! brand port over to Telekom Austria, as well as the annual €56 million revenues they generate.
The acquisition will leave 3 Austria holding the rest of the business, for which it is paying a net €900 million. The deal combines the number three and four players, although the group would stay in third place behind mobilkom and T-Mobile Austria.
In this excellent blog, Informa analyst Thomas Wehmeier asks if 3’s role as consolidator, rather than consolidatee, is something we might see repeated elsewhere in Europe where it trails in fourth in a four player market. He points out that its market share in Austria would be significantly more than in any of its other markets, and asks if the deal places its holdings in the likes of the UK and Italy under further pressure.Â
Market analysts also said that the deal is a statement of Hutchison’s commitment to the Austrian market. It’s an interesting reversal for 3 to act as the consolidating force, but it may not be one Hutch can afford to repeat in other markets. It also occurred to me, and it’s just a thought, that if there is a buyer waiting off-stage, in the wings, then could it be that Hutch is carrying our some consolidation and cost-cutting, prior to a further sale on to a hidden entity, perhaps with other operating units as part of the deal.
Elsewhere this week there was some deep techie news, actually from last December but only announced now, for whatever reason, that Ericsson had achieved a mid-call handover from an LTE network to a 3G network using a single radio. This is a slightly esoteric point for most people, but essentially the SRVCC (Single Radio Voice Call Continuity) approach is another tool in the box for LTE operators that want to be able to support IP voice services in LTE and also to allow users to “roam” or handover onto 3G networks mid-call. That means of course that a call doesn’t drop if a user strolls out of network, but also that a user can actually benefit from IP voice functionality when they are in LTE coverage. At the moment, voice calls to LTE phones are not carried over the LTE network, as the phone is bumped back to the 2G or 3G network for voice or SMS.
Sticking with voice for the time being, there was a nugget from Swisscom that it has become the latest operator to offer HD Voice over its UMTS network. “Users will not be charged for this service” the operator said. Another indication that HD Voice is becoming a standard “value add” element for operators.
Something that many hope will become standard for operators is RCS-e or RCS-type services. Although there are no further details, it emerged in the Spanish press this week that the Spanish operators’ RCS-e service, due to be launched in the first half of this year, will be called Joyn. If I were them, I’d be busting a gut to have something available, by whatever means possible, by Mobile World Congress, but they may not make it.
Speaking of the MWC behemoth, word reaches us that the event is set for record attendance. Registrations are way up on last year, where 60,000 souls were harvested by the GSMA. We were also told that the GSMA is expecting 12,000 developers to attend, which seems an astonishing percentage of its total attendance. Google has booked more space. All exhibition space is sold out, with 1,400 companies being represented in one way or another across 70,000 square metres. Nokia has returned. It looks set to be a proper biggie. Let, er, battle commence.
Keith Dyer
Editor
Mobile Europe