Cable remains the market leader in The Netherlands with 3.39 million connections. DSL is still number two, despite a decrease to 2.85 million connections, according to Telecompaper.
Fibre broadband grew slightly to 1.13 million connections at the end of Q3.
The total number of connections rose 0.3% year-on-year to 7.366 million, according to Telecompaper, which said this was no small feat on such a saturated market and after growth of just 0.1% in the second quarter.
Growth for fibre was lower in Q3 than in previous quarters, with 8,000 new broadband customers, but cable advanced to 17,000 connections. This is much more than in Q2 (+2,000) and Q1 (+9,000). The number of broadband via DSL (copper) connections continued to decline, but the small decrease of 1,000 in Q3 was much lower than in the preceding quarters.
KPN’s market share grew by 0.7% in Q3 to 41.2 percent. This is the same level that KPN had in early 2011, before Ziggo merged with UPC and started the advance to the number 1 postition. The cable provider maintained the top position in Q3 with a 43.6% share. The growth of KPN’s market share was not organic but mainly due to the acquisition of independent ISP Solcon in July.
Aside from Ziggo and KPN, the market also has a number of smaller players. Of these, T-Mobile Netherlands (T-Mobile Thuis, acquired from Vodafone) showed the highest quarterly growth of 4,000, to reach 188,000. That was good for a market share of 2.5%. On the other hand, established names such as Tele2 Netherlands and Online.nl lost customers and market share. Parties such as NLe (established since the end of 2016) and Youfone (recently) have also become active in the broadband market.
Revenues from broadband connections amounted to EUR 488 million in the third quarter, 2.9% more than in the second. Growth came mainly from the price increases that KPN and Ziggo implemented on 1 July for triple play and broadband services. For the entire year, Telecompaper expects revenue growth of 2.4%.
For 2017-2021, Telecompaper expects an average growth per year of 1.1% in the number of broadband connections and an average annual revenue growth of 1.1%.