2016 Greece - Telecoms, Mobile, Broadband and Digital Media - Statistics and Analyses

Greece’s telcos secure multi-million Euro loans to build out NGNs

Greece’s telecoms market has undergone some very tough economic conditions in recent years, leading to lower sector revenue and investment. Operators across the board have seen gross profits tumble, and the continuing economic turmoil will make market conditions particularly tough during the next few years. The dominant player remains the incumbent telco Cosmote (OTE). The company has experienced significant challenges, but is supported by the organisational ability and financial clout of its parent Deutsche Telekom. Despite market liberalisation, Cosmote continues to dominate all sectors in the market.

The telecom regulator EETT 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. In February 2017 access for competitors was extended to Cosmote vectoring VDSL infrastructure.

The main broadband operators have recently secured loans to enable them to build fibre-based next generation networks and so reach European broadband targets by 2020. The slowly increasing consumer take up of broadband services and a steady deployment of faster VDSL infrastructure has in turn encouraged the development of a range of IP services including streaming videostreaming.

Greece’s well-developed mobile market is dominated by the three mobile network operators Wind Hellas, Vodafone Greece and Cosmote. Tariffs have fallen in recent years as a result of competition and regulatory mandated reductions in MTRs. Operators have invested in LTE infrastructure and technologies including carrier aggregation to provide networks capable of meeting customer demand for data services. This in turn is helping the operators to grow revenue and offset declining revenue from voice and SMS services. Wind Hellas and Vodafone have a mobile network sharing deal in place, and have also partnered to develop a large-scale fibre-based fixed-line NGN.

This report introduces the key aspects of the Greek fixed-line telecoms, wholesale and IT markets, outlining the regulatory environment, assessing the major players and providing relevant operational data and financial statistics on both the operators and the market. The report also reviews the mobile market, covering regulatory and market developments as well as financial and operating statistics for the key players. In addition the report analyses the fixed and wireless broadband markets, providing an assessment of developments relating to vectoring VDSL and fibre networks as well as subscriber forecasts to 2022.

Key developments:

• Regulator selects Forthnet as Universal Services provider;
• Three telcos planning to invest €250 million to meet EU broadband targets by 2020;
• Cypriot government draws up legislation aimed at selling off Cyta Hellas;
• Government transfers 5% stake in OTE to TAIPED privatisation agency;
• Forthnet rebrands all services as Nova;
• Deregulation of the retail market for fixed-line calls;
• Alternative operators able to access Cosmote’s VDSL vectoring technology;
• Cosmote extends VDSL network to cover 1.3 million premises;
• Cosmote trials carrier aggregation technology providing 1.2Gb/s download, launches LTE-A Pro services providing data at up to 500Mb/s;
• Report update includes the regulator’s 2015 market review and 2015 annual report, telcos’ financial and operating data to Q4 2016, recent market developments.

Companies mentioned in this report:

Cosmote (OTE), Forthnet (Nova), Wind Hellas, On Telecoms, Tellas, Hellas Online, Vodafone Greece, Cytaglobal, Telecom Italia Sparkle, Vestitel.