Tuesday, May 03, 2005

UMA - Universal Mutual Annihilation

Denmark, spritual home of the disruptive MVNO model, may be about to see another source of pressure in its crowded and brutal market, from TeliaSonera, which is planning to trial a UMA-based converged product ahead of a "possible launch" in 2006. After its acquisition of Orange's Danish business last year, TeliaSonera is third in the mobile market (1.1m subs), just behind Telenor's Sonofon, though the two are very close in numbers of contract customers. TeliaSonera also has 134k broadband subs in the market, so there is probably a pretty good case, as an ambitious challenger, to stitch product offerings together in a more coherent way. I am curious, however, what the impact on pricing might be here, and also who else may follow along the same lines (France Telecom in the UK?).

UPDATE: Had barely published this when Motorola chimed in with a press release claiming seven European trials in all, but only identifying TeliaSonera by name. I assume BT is also included in this group of seven. Any ideas out there on who the other five are?

No comments: