2017 Greece - Telecoms, Mobile and Broadband - Statistics and Analyses

Greece’s mobile operators extend licences and focus on network upgrades

Greece’s telecoms market has suffered from tough economic conditions in recent years, leading to lower sector revenue and investment. Operators across the board have seen gross profits tumble year after year, and the continuing economic turmoil will make market conditions difficult during the next few years. Although the incumbent telco Cosmote remains the dominant operator in all sectors, the telecom regulator has shown increasing success in promoting competition, with local loop unbundling well utilised to deliver competing fixed-line services. Promoting competition has become one of the EC’s conditions for Greece’s financial bailouts. The regulator showed its willingness to cooperate by fining Cosmote in late 2017 for LLU infringements.

Broadband penetration in Greece is developing steadily despite the difficult economic conditions and the 5% tax imposed of internet services from January 2017. These conditions have reduced consumer spend on services, with a knock-on effect on revenue. Nevertheless, the main operators have been able to secure loans to enable them to build fibre-based next generation networks and so reach the European broadband targets for 2025.

Greece’s well-developed mobile market is dominated by the three mobile network operators Wind Hellas, Vodafone Greece and Cosmote. These operators continue to invest in LTE infrastructure and technologies, including carrier aggregation, to provide networks capable of meeting customer demand for data services. This in turn is helping them offset declining revenue from voice and SMS services.

This report provides an overview of Greece’s telecom market, including a review of the key telcos and regulatory measures, and an assessment of the operating environment. The report also analyses the mobile voice and data markets, covering regulatory and market developments as well as financial and operating statistics of the key players. In addition the report considers the key aspects of the fixed and fixed-wireless broadband markets.

Key developments:

• Cosmote extends Smart City projects to Halkida and Patras;
• Regulator selects Forthnet as Universal Services provider;
• Regulator fines Cosmote for LLU infringements;
• Vestitel builds second fibre-optic link between Greece and Bulgaria;
• Cosmote, Vodafone and Wind Hellas pay €201.45 million to extend 1800MHz licences to end-2035;
• Cosmote trials carrier aggregation technology providing data at up to 1.2Gb/s;
• 2G spectrum to be refarmed for 3G and LTE use;
• Alternative operators able to access Cosmote’s VDSL vectoring technology;
• Wind Hellas providing 1Gb/s in fibre trials;
• Regulations ratified for in-building fibre ducts;
• Report update includes the regulator’s market review and 2016 annual report, telcos’ operating and financial data to Q3 2017 recent market developments.

Companies mentioned in this report:

Cosmote (OTE), Forthnet (Nova), Wind Hellas, On Telecoms, Tellas, Vodafone Greece, Hellas Online