Full fiber plans bring faster and soon cheaper internet to Western European homes

Consumer broadband services reflect brand and network fragmentation across the region With hundreds of ISPs active across Western Europe, and fierce competition in national markets, telecom operators have several options to stand out: pricing, connection speed, customer service, marketing efforts, aggregation of entertainment services and so on. With the capacity to craft very malleable consumer offers, it is no wonder that Western European broadband providers operate a wide variety of services. When looking in detail at tier-1 ISPs in the region, we can see that offering a diverse line-up of services hardly correlates to operators’ subscriber base. Spanish tier-1 telcos offer the most varied range of consumer offers, with an average of 20 different options for the country’s 4 main ISPs, depending on pricing, speed, and the number of landlines available. Another reason why they stand out is that they often operate a multi-brand portfolio, keeping brands active after acquisitions and/or launching new low-cost brands with an adjacent market positioning to the main trade name. For example, Masmovil also operates brands like Euskaltel (acquired in 2021), Hits Mobile (acquired in 2019), Pepephone (acquired in 2016), Virgin Telco (formerly operated by Euskaltel) and Yoigo (acquired in 2016); while Orange Espana is behind Jazztel (acquired in 2015) and Simyo (a low-cost brand licensed from Dutch telco KPN). On the other side of the spectrum, Italian ISPs have a very simple structure of services: only 2 home internet plans at Vodafone, or 3 at Wind Tre (out of which its 5G FWA service is only available to limited areas). In Portugal, virtually all broadband services have to be subscribed in a 3play bundle, with MEO not even offering any internet-only plans. This makes for a very simple consumer offers structure, and explains why 3play and IPTV services adoption in the market is so wide. The level of variety in operators’ line-up can also be measured in terms of price bracket. In the Netherlands, tier-1 ISPs offer a more limited range of prices, especially KPN which only offered internet at home for a minimum of EUR 42.49 a month, or a maximum of EUR 54.49, a 12 EUR gap. This changed last month with the introduction of a new premium tier enabling 4Gb/s access for EUR 64.49 after promotion. The overall prices of the French 4 national ISPs’ broadband-only services only range from 19.99 (with Free) to EUR 39.99 a month with promotions. The fragmentation of broadband offers can also be explained by the coexistence of various access technologies in operators’ scope of services. In Austria, ISPs commercialize services on 2.6 different network accesses on average, mainly because fiber networks are yet to be deployed across the country and telcos still heavily rely on...