Telecompaper often hears about mobile price comparisons between countries, without having the details of the research. As we have shown in our previous Research Brief (Comparing EU mobile packages a daunting task: Dutch consumer not worst off) it is extremely difficult to compare price plans between operators, nationally and internationally. Therefore we decided not to include any actual price plan information in our comparison for this Research Brief, but instead to see if and how the mobile markets of two countries can be compared on more general issues, such as various rates of penetration (postpaid, smarthpones) and general aspects of the price plans offered, as well as looking at which factors actually influence pricing and what we can learn from other research comparing prices. For the two countries we chose the Netherlands and France, where the market has recently been shaken up by newcomer Free. We started with a high-level comparison of the two markets based on our most recent Dutch and French Mobile Operators reports. Then we looked at the structure of the plans, which shows that the French in general have more complicated plans. Factors influencing prices include, amongst others, the geography of the country, the MTA levels set by the regulators, the differences in consumer behaviour (such as smartphone penetration) as well as whether quad-play is offered or not. Some of the pitfalls shown in other research include baskets not reflecting current mobile usage, including VAT in prices and ignoring handset subsidies. Therefore Telecompaper believes that the nearest one can get to a like-for-like comparison is the calculation of Total Cost of Ownership, based on average use information for minutes/SMS and MBs from national regulators.
