Friday, August 8, 2008

FastWeb Adds 60K Broadband Subscribers in 2Q08

FastWeb, the competitive carrier in Italy, added 60 thousand broadband subscribers in 2Q08 (135 thousand in 1H08) giving it a total of 1.398 million subscribers. It had no comments on the number of IPTV subscribers that it serves.

The company plans to offer a 100 Mbps fiber offer to small and medium enterprises in 4Q08 at a premium price, and will extend this to the SOHO and residential market after the end of this year. This is an upgrade from its current 10 Mbps service. It expects this higher speed service to lower churn and stabilize ARPUs.

FastWeb stated that its fiber service passes 2 million homes in Milan, Turin, Genoa, Bologna, Roma, Naples, and Bari. It stated that this is higher coverage than any other European country. Fastweb's 243 thousand fiber subscribers is nearly 25 percent of all of the fiber subscribers in Europe.

FastWeb will introduce mobile services in Italy in September 2008. It will focus selling the service to its current customers in October and launch it to the business market in 4Q08. It is currently evaluating a mobile offering to its executive customer base.

As usual I interpret the lack of an announcement of IPTV subscribers to indicate that there was no significant increase during the quarter.

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