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Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Austrian mobile broadband competing with lazy incumbents?

Austria is a famously homogenous country for communications - between Telekom Austria, UPC and ORF, there never used to be much competition in fixed, cable and TV. 3G auctions included a win for Hutchison 3 - the people who brought you Orange - and they now claim 8% market share of the entire AUT broadband market, and leadership in mobile broadband. Consumers appear to be abandoning fixed broadband in droves, as Analysys Masons state: 'in December 2009, on the basis of circumstances closely related to the specificity of the Austrian market, the Commission accepted the inclusion of mobile and broadband connections in the retail residential market. The specific circumstances included: mobile broadband was used by around 35% of residential customers in March 2009, compared to DSL at 40% and CATV at 22%... the share of mobile broadband [HSDPA] connections increased strongly between 2007 and 2009, accounting for approximately 70% of new broadband lines in the first three months of 2009... prices of fixed and mobile broadband connections were moving closer together and that fixed broadband providers directly react to price reductions introduced by mobile broadband operators. 75% of residential mobile broadband customers used their connection mainly on a stand-alone basis, rather than coupled with a fixed connection.'

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