Is the telecoms market reaching its saturation point? That’s a question that the industry commentators have been asking themselves for a while, as the period of great growth in telecoms comes to an end, leaving a handful of providers owning most of the market.
Reported on Top 10 Broadband recently, Point Topic research shows that while UK broadband subscriptions increased to 17.4 million last year, tough economic conditions and other factors suggest a challenging 2009 for operators:
“According to a study conducted by Point Topic, broadband take-up slumped during the second half when just 675,000 new subscriptions were taken out. This compares with one million for the first six months. The sharp decline after June meant that the broadband market grew by 10.6 per cent over the course of the year – almost half of 2007’s expansion of 19.9 per cent.”
Arguably, the biggest challenge for an ISP right now is maintaining growth momentum, with so few new adopters predicted to enter the fixed-line market in 2009. Here in the Market Intelligence unit at TalkTalk, we’re expecting an interesting year for the telecoms industry.
As we near the ’saturation point’, at the front of all of our minds is that we are now in a ’switchers market’, much like utility services such as gas and electricity, where providers look more carefully at customer retention and attracting customers from other providers.
I spend a lot of time monitoring our competitors’ products and performance, and can see they all face big challenges in 2009 – dealing with corporate issues such as pension deficits, managing a global portfolio of services in the economic downturn and competing in the highly competitive pay TV and mobile markets. I’m confident that TalkTalk is in a great position (our retention rates are some of the best in the business) but, more importantly, it’s good news for consumers as a saturated market is a more competitive market.
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TalkTalk Blog Team