More and more Dutch households are bundling their TV, fixed line or mobile service with a broadband subscription. According to research by Telecompaper, revenues from these multi-play subscriptions rose by 6.5 percent year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2016 to EUR 1.04 billion.
The Dutch Consumer Multiplay Market report shows that almost 6.5 million Dutch households had a multi-play package at the end of 2016. A growing share used quad-plays, including both fixed and mobile services, at 15 percent of all multi-play subscribers. That's up from 11 percent at the end of 2015.
However the majority still have a triple-play plan, at 3.96 million households combining three (fixed or mobile) services at one provider. This number is falling as more opt for quad-play offers. Dutch regulator ACM is investigating how the increased bundling is affecting competition on the Dutch market for fixed and mobile services.
Strong growth in quad-play expected
Telecompaper expects the number of quad-play subscriptions to grow strongly from the second quarter of 2017. This follows the launch in early April of VodafoneZiggo's new offer for customers taking both fixed and mobile services.
The report also found that the number of customers combining two services (dual-play) has been falling slowly from a peak in Q4 2014. Consumers are choosing less to combine broadband and fixed telephony and instead adding TV or mobile services to the bundle.
Ziggo biggest multiplay provider
Ziggo is the biggest provider of multi-play subscriptions in terms of number of connections, with a 47.9 percent market share, followed by KPN at 39.3 percent. Ziggo also leads in multi-play revenues with a 47.5 percent share, while KPN has a slightly higher share of 42.9 percent. KPN leads in the quad-play segment, with almost 86 percent of subscriptions and 87 percent of revenues, while Ziggo is at almost 11 percent of subscribers and 10 percent of revenues. Mobile operator T-Mobile has also just launched its own fixed offering, but has not yet introduced quad-play plans.
