WCA September 2012

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Telecom news
Wire & Cable ASIA – September/October 2012
Some 46 per cent of TV
sets sold in Germany –
almost every second unit
– can be connected to the
Internet
As reported by Jörn Krieger in
RapidTVNews, TV sets with Internet
access have gained in popularity in
Europe, with the number of connected
TV sets sold expected to rise by 68
per cent (to 19.1 million) this year
compared with 2011. Citing the
German industry association BITKOM,
Mr Krieger wrote that at least one
in three flat-screen TV sets sold
in Europe (37 per cent) in 2012 will
be Internet-compatible. Referencing
current figures compiled by the
European Information Technology
Observatory (EITO), BITKOM looks
for the turnover in these devices to
increase by 40 per cent to $18.4 billion
by the end of the year. (“Connected
TV Sets Boom in Europe,” 6th June).
The average price of a connected TV
set was found to have dropped 17 per
cent this year (to $969) compared with
2011, despite the fact that sets now on
the market offer more features than
previous models. The lower price can
be attributed to strong competition
among manufacturers and retailers.
The largest single market by far is
Germany, where 4.6 million connected
TV sets will be sold in 2012, for an
increase of 36 per cent over 2011.
This means that 46 per cent of TV
sets sold in Germany (almost every
second unit) can be connected to the
Internet. Britain is the second-largest
market, with around 2.9 million con-
nected TV sets to be sold there in
2012. According to BITKOM every
sixth household in Germany now
has a connected TV set, with that 17
per cent saturation seen as rising to
22 per cent by the end of the year. As
an interesting aside, the association
estimates that only slightly more than
half of the owners of connected TV
sets actually hook up their units to
the Internet.
France’s doughty little
Minitel falls victim to
the Internet
“We invented a lot of today’s
technology with the Minitel. The
Internet, all online networks, it all
stemmed from the Minitel.”
The speaker was Jean-Paul Maury,
former director of the Minitel project
at France Télécom, which on 2nd July
announced that, after three decades
of service, a French technological
wonder had been closed down.
Developed as a paper-saving measure
in the 1970s by France Télécom,
then a state-owned monopoly, the
government-supported Minitel was
distributed free to every household as
part of an upgrade of the telephone
network.
On its demise the text-only terminal
that brought real-time banking,
transport updates, weather reports,
ticket booking, sports results, and
much else into French homes was
fondly recalled around the world.
Catherine Field of the New Zealand
Herald wrote: “Users received a beige
plastic cube with a flipdown, clunky
keyboard, and black-and-white screen
about the size of a paperback. It was
plugged into the phone socket and
used landlines to carry the data.”
Ms Field noted that, at the Minitel’s
peak in the mid-1990s, 25 million
people using 26,000 of its services
averaged two million connections
a month. Many of these employed
“Pink Minitel,” the forerunner of the
online forum. Tens of thousands of
businesses sprung up around the
device, which at the height of its
popularity accounted for $1.5 billion
a year in connection fees for France
Télécom. The company tried to
promote it abroad, but was overtaken
by events.
With the British government planning to sell broadcast spectrum for
LTE (long term evolution) service by the end of this year, European mobile
network operators have given thought as to how they might benefit. On
7th June, Spain’s Telefónica and Britain’s Vodafone announced that they will
combine their wireless phone grids in Britain and jointly build a superfast
network to keep pace with the market leader: Everything Everywhere, a joint
venture of Germany’s T-Mobile and France Télécom.
According to the London-based GSM Association, an industry group, the
60-odd distinct network operators active in Europe’s mobile phone market
have created an infrastructure density about three times that in North
America and Asia. Thus collaboration with rivals on grids to reduce present
and future costs is on the rise. Combining the networks of O2 UK – the
No 2 British operator, owned by Telefónica – and Vodafone UK, the No 3, will
enable Telefónica and Vodafone to share the expense of building a national
mobile broadband network using LTE technology.
Vodafone and Telefónica plan to place their British networks into
a 50-50 venture encompassing a combined total of 18,500 cell
tower masts, an increase of about 40 per cent for each operator.
Telefónica already shares its network with Vodafone in Spain
and with T-Mobile in the Czech Republic. The British venture
expands on a previous equipment-sharing partnership between
O2 and Vodafone, called Cornerstone, that began in 2009.
Writing from Berlin in the International Herald Tribune (7th June), Kevin J
O’Brien observed that it was the expense of building LTE networks in saturated
European markets that prompted Telenor, a Norwegian operator, and Tele2,
a Swedish operator, to merge their networks in Sweden. In Germany, O2, the
nation’s No 3 mobile operator, and E-Plus, the No 4 owned by KPN of the
Netherlands, are also examining venture options for their businesses.
✆ Mr O’Brien noted an anomaly of the Vodafone-Telefónica partnership,
even as it promises savings on operating and equipment costs in Britain.
The two carriers intend to continue to run competing services and even
bid against each other in the upcoming British spectrum auction.
Telefónica and Vodafone are to join forces into one
grid running independent networks in Britain