Daiwa EuroTelcoblog No. 73: Wednesday 8th September, 2004 - T-Mobile trials Flarion in Dutch market

(This went out as a client email at 8:00 AM London time today, but Blogger has been giving me major grief over the past several hours, which is why it only appears in the blogsite many hours later.)

Some time back, in profiling Flarion (http://eurotelcoblog.blogspot.com/2004/07/daiwa-eurotelcoblog-no_26.html) and speculating on who might trial the technology first in Europe, we stated that our money was on T-Mobile, and probably in one of its weaker markets, such as the Netherlands. Today this has been confirmed in a press release from Flarion, which states that a trial with friendly users is already active in The Hague. If it goes commercial it will be an important differentiator for T-Mobile in a brutal Dutch mobile market, and perhaps add further pressure to the lower bandwidth end of the residential broadband market in the Netherlands, which is where most of the real action has been over the past three or four quarters in any event. I.e., this is probably another good reason to be negative on KPN. We are still intrigued by the possibility that, as a shareholder in Flarion, T-Mobile may have some pre-emption rights over the technology in its European footprint, though this is speculation on our part. At the very least, we believe the UK market may follow as another area of deployment for T-Mobile, depending on the success of the Dutch trial.