Greece - Telecoms, Mobile and Broadband - Statistics and Analyses

Greece - Telecoms, Mobile and Broadband - Statistics and Analyses

Greece’s telcos invest more in fibre to reach 2025 goals

Greece’s telecoms market has suffered from tough economic conditions in recent years, leading to lower sector overall revenue and investment. Operators across the board have seen gross profits tumble year after year, and the continuing economic turmoil will make market conditions particularly difficult during the next few years. The dominant player remains the incumbent telco OTE, which has experienced significant challenges but is supported by the organisational ability and financial clout of its parent Deutsche Telekom, which now owns a 45% stake in the company.

Broadband penetration in Greece is developing steadily despite the difficult economic conditions. The main operators have nevertheless secured loans to enable them to build fibre-based next generation networks and so reach the European broadband targets for 2025. Consumers in Greece have limited choices, since the country remains the only one in Europe with a single access network, there being no cable platform and only a very limited reach of fibre infrastructure thus far.

Greece’s well-developed mobile market is dominated by the three mobile network operators Wind Hellas, Vodafone Greece and Cosmote. Operators continue to invest in LTE infrastructure and technologies to provide networks capable of meeting customer demand for data services. This in turn is helping the operators to offset declining revenue from voice and SMS services. Wind Hellas and Vodafone have a mobile network sharing deal and have partnered to develop a large-scale fibre-based fixed-line NGN.

The regulator has set in train the release of spectrum in the 3.4-3.8GHz band for 5G use, anticipating spectrum auctions to be held during 2019, with services being launched in urban areas by late 2019 and nationally by 2020. In October 2018 Wind Hellas announced plans to trial 5G during 2019, initially in Kalamata.

This report introduces the key aspects of the Greek fixed-line telecoms, wholesale and IT market, 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 covers the fixed-line broadband segment, as also the mobile voice and data markets, covering regulatory and sector developments as well as reviews of the key players.

Key developments:

Ericsson deploys NB-IoT for Cosmote in 11 cities;
Vodafone completes acquisition of Cyta Hellas;
Cosmote, Vodafone and Wind Hellas pay €201.45 million to extend 1800MHz licences to end-2035;
Cosmote trials carrier aggregation technology providing data at up to 1.2Gb/s, launches LTE-A Pro services;
Alternative operators able to access OTE’s VDSL vectoring technology;
Wind Hellas providing 1Gb/s in fibre trials, extends fibre sharing venture with Vodafone Greece;
Amended laws reducing SIM card penetration;
2G spectrum refarmed for 3G and LTE use;
OTE extends Smart City projects to Halkida and Patras;
Government sells 5% stake in OTE to Deutsche Telekom;
Report update includes the regulator’s market review and annual report for 2017, telcos’ operating and financial data to Q3 2018, recent market developments.

Companies mentioned in this report:

Vodafone Greece, OTE (Cosmote), Wind Hellas, Forthnet (Nova), Wind Hellas, On Telecoms, Tellas, On Telecoms