For the first time, Dutch incumbent KPN sees the number of its IPTV customers decline with 7k, the number of broadband hones was down 24k.
In addition to the decline in IPTV customers, KPN also lost TV customers which it classifies under ‘other’, which includes subscribers to the Digiten DTT service – this figure is down 14k, bringing the total loss of TV homes to 21K – or a total of 2,353,000.
The company said the decline in broadband and IPTV customers is mainly driven by the brand rationalisation as acquisition of Telfort customers was discontinued per 1 May 2019. Furthermore, it was also impacted by the announcement of price adjustments and by communication on changes in TV content offering in April this year. KPN dropped a number mof linear channels and due to a carriage spat with Fox channels, threatened to end distribution of a number of popular channels including NatGeo.
In Q2 2019, Residential revenues grew 0.8% y-on-y, driven by increasing revenues from bundled services. Fixed ARPU increased 6.0% y-on-y to € 46 in Q2 2019. Price adjustments in fixed were effective from 1 June 2019.
Converged households grew by 41k (of which 38k due to Telfort integration) to 1,399k, representing 48% of broadband customers. KPN’s
“We made good progress with the execution of our strategy. We have started the brand integration in the second quarter and have seen strong interest in converged propositions from our Telfort customers, leading to strengthened household relationships. In Business, we continued with the execution of customer migrations to our future proof KPN EEN portfolio and ‘value over volume’ strategy,” said departing CEO, Maximo Ibarra.
“In a final note, as announced in June, pressing family reasons have led me to resign as CEO of KPN and return to Italy. I am confident that I will leave KPN in very capable hands, backed by the strong Executive team that KPN has in place. I’d like also to thank the Boards, my team and everyone involved in KPN for their support during my tenure with the Company.” (Meanwhile, it became clear that Ibarra was taking up a position at Sky Italia)
