Pyramid Research's research 'Quad-Play Strategies in Western Europe: Growth Drivers and Best Practices for Service Providers' expects quad-play to cover up to 60% of households in some Western European countries by 2019. The research report, which was released recently by MarketReportsStore.com, says that Western Europe already boasts a high proportion of households with subscription to triple-play services and the move by service providers to offer the entire suite of communication services will be seeing more people shifting to quad-play service subscriptions.
Quad-play service refers to the bundling of fixed internet, telephony, tv and mobile services. It allows service providers to consolidate all these services under a single bill, offer bigger discounts on access and content and provide a single point of contact for subscriber management. On the business end, service providers are able to cross sell and retain their total subscriber base by offering different services, compensate the revenues lost from the competition from mobile (for fixed voice) and Wi-Fi (for mobile internet) while optimizing their infrastructure and software investments.
Telephony service providers have long bundled their service with fixed internet access via ADSL and later fiber broadband connectivity, and by delivering IPTV services delivered as an 'over-the-top' managed service on the fiber broadband infrastructure, have emerged as one of the earliest triple play providers. Some service providers, who were yet to offer IPTV services but who instead went on to build their own mobile networks, became triple-play operators who offered the telephony, mobile and home internet services. As more service providers move on to complement their triple-play services with either IPTV services and mobile services, there was an emergence of quad-play operators in the market who provided all four services, albeit the different brand names often used for different service verticals.
At the same time, players who started off as mobile operators have begun expanding into the home broadband business and home telephony services, creating their own suite of triple-play services. With the introduction of mobile TV and OTT video services, these players are now becoming the latest quad-play operators, covering both connectivity and digital content needs of their subscribers and with newer technologies, are fast gaining a stronger foothold in all four segments. The advent of VoWiFi technology, for example, will mean that mobile operators can leverage on a household's home broadband connection to provide telephony services (via Wi-Fi calling) on top of providing OTT video/TV, allowing them to transform instantaneously into triple-play service providers. VoWiFi, in combination with VoLTE will allow households to move from the fixed voice service to 'fixed-and-mobile' voice service that switches from cellular to fixed line intelligently in any place, anytime, removing the need for users to reach out to the traditional telephone for fixed line calls.
According to MarketReportsStore.com, the Western European market which has high fixed and mobile services penetration rates (79% and 141% respectively in 2014) has seen some early success in the quad-play market, specifically from the French and Spanish operators who launched packages as early as 2009 for France and in 2013 for Spain. MarketReportsStore.com said that national incumbents are typically the major players in this segment, establishing their quad-play offering via acquisitions (examples include Vodafone which bought over ONO and Orange which acquired Jazztel in Spain) and also by building new networks such as that done by Free in France. The company also cited BT's recent acquisition of EE and and Virgin UK's quad-play service launch earlier this year as some of the recent examples of quad-play initiatives in other countries in the region.
