Tele2 NL CEO choice puts focus on marketing, not network

Commentary General Netherlands 4 MRT 2014
Tele2 NL CEO choice puts focus on marketing, not network

Tele2 Netherlands will have a new CEO from 14 April: Jeff Dodds. He comes from UK operator Virgin Media, where he was chief marketing officer. Following the takeover of Virgin Media by Liberty Global (completed in June 2013), he served as strategy consultant for Libery Global and the Swedish operator Com Hem. Tele2's previous CEO in the Netherlands, Gunther Vogelpoel, left in November 2013 and CFO Ernst-Jan van Rooijen has been serving as interim CEO. Van Rooijen will revert to CFO once Dodds takes up the new job.

With Jeff Dodds, Tele2 has chosen someone attracted to the challenger market. This makes him a good fit at Tele2 NL. He is not a network man, but for a more or less technology-neutral company like Tele2 that's not an issue. At Virgin Media, the same as at Tele2, the focus is on services and marketing. The network is of secondary interest, even if Tele2 is increasingly valuing the importance of next-generation access networks such as LTE and FTTH. Virgin Media provides services over various forms of infrastructure with no problems. Com Hem has a similar approach: the Swedish company (built on the assets of the former UPC Sweden) delivers services over its own cable infrastructure, but also on various FTTH networks controlled by other players.

Virgin Media has always been strong in multi-play packages and upselling, adding mobile to its triple-play offer. Virgin and Com Hem were also both pragmatic in choosing to offer the TiVo set-top box.

Looking ahead, we can expect a few things from the arrival of Jeff Dodds at Tele2:

  • Tele2 sticks to its integrated strategy, of consumer and business services, fixed and mobile.
  • Apart from its CEO, Tele2 NL also lost in 2013 its network director Hein Boot and consumer/SME director Herwin van Kamp. Now that the company's LTE roll-out is getting underway and Tele2 is looking at FTTH unbundling (unless the slower roll-out of passive infrastructure by KPN/Reggefiber makes unbundling too expensive) a second top executive focused on infrastructure would not be out of place.
  • Realistic targets, likely somewhat more modest than its existing goals (eg 20% share of the consumer mobile market).
  • Continuing to 'buy' market share in the mobile market and recovery in the consumer fixed market. It's not going well with the latter, which Tele2 made clear at Vogelpoel's departure. 
  • At the product level, a quad-play offer and the TiVo set-top box as the standard decoder for FTTH.

Categories:

General

Companies:

Tele2,  Com Hem,  Tele2 Netherlands,  TiVo,  Virgin Media

Countries:

Netherlands

Tags:

Corporate strategy, Officers & directors

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