Fibre was the star performer in 2015, growing by almost 30 percent to nearly 1 million broadband connections or 13 percent of the market at year-end. However, cable remained the most popular broadband technology, despite only modest customer growth in Q4 and 2015, with just over 46 percent of connections at the end of 2015. DSL continued to lose customers, down by 0.2 percent in the last three months of the year to just under 3 million users or 40.5 percent of the total market.
The strong growth in the fibre market helped KPN narrow the gap with market leader Ziggo in 2015. Ziggo’s growth slowed in the fourth quarter to only 6,000 net broadband additions. It ended the year with 43.4 percent of connections, down from 44.2 percent a year earlier. KPN (including Telfort, XS4ALL and the Edutel brands) had more net additions during the fourth quarter, with 40,000. It gained 0.2 percentage points of market share during the quarter and 0.7 percent over the full year to end 2015 with 40.7 percent of broadband connections, returning to the share it had in 2013.
Despite the increasingly saturated market, with 92.4 percent of Dutch households subscribing to broadband, the market is expected to grow further in 2016, by 2.5 percent, according to the report. Cable and fibre are expected to continue to grow, offsetting the steady decrease in DSL users. For the period 2016-2020, Telecompaper expects a CAGR of 1.9 percent per year in the number of broadband connections.
Telecompaper estimates the Dutch broadband market was worth over EUR 459 million in retail revenue in the fourth quarter of 2015. For the full year, broadband revenues reached EUR 1.84 billion, growing 1.6 percent compared with 2014. The revenues are expected to grow at a CAGR of 1.4 percent over the five-year period 2016-2020.
