Ziggo reports the number of departed customers in the latest quarterly and annual figures† Last quarter, 9100 internet customers left Ziggo. The Vodafone mobile branch simultaneously gained 45,000 new subscribers last quarter, and a total of 228,000 last year.
Nevertheless, the delivery of fixed services is the most important for Ziggo. Despite the departing customers, the company managed to limit its loss with a price increase that was implemented in May† Many subscriptions then became several euros more expensive: on average, the monthly price of subscribers to fixed services rose by 2 percent to 52 euros per month. Total turnover last year at 4.1 billion euros was slightly higher than in 2020 and the EBITDA also rose to 1.91 billion euros.
–
–
Load of fiberglass
Ziggo gave no reason for the declining internet subscribers this time, but did say that fiber optic providers are a factor. The competition is fierce: KPN, Delta and the partnership T-Mobile/Open Dutch Fiber are all installing fiber optic connections at great speed in cities, villages and rural areas.
Every day, about 2000 fiber optic connections are added in the Netherlands. Fiber optic internet is currently often somewhat cheaper than Ziggo’s cable internet, with higher download and especially upload speeds. With cable internet, the upload speed is often only 10 percent of the download speed, while with fiber optic it is just as high as the download speed.
–
–
More fiber from Ziggo this year
This limitation is inextricably linked to the copper cable that Ziggo uses. Large parts of the Ziggo network now consists of fiberglass, so that almost 75 percent of Ziggo customers now have access to a download speed of up to 1Gbps. But the piece of cable that runs from the district cupboard to the customers’ homes is still made of copper.
Ziggo will go well in new residential areas this year fiberglass to the door lay. Initially, the internet speeds of customers will remain the same, partly because of the cable modems that Ziggo supplies.
–
–
Streamers on the lookout
Fiber optic is not the only threat to Ziggo: there is also a lot of movement in the field of content. Ziggo lost the bidding battle for the Formula 1 rights, which went to the Swedish ViaPlay went. And the deal with HBO has also ended. streaming service HBO Max is out March available in the Netherlands. Ziggo has thus lost two important trump cards.
–
–
