InfoCom says Dark Fibre market in Germany increasingly a niche market.

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German dark fibre market rather small and fragmented — Dark Fibre generally provided on demand — Ubiquitous cooperation with utilities, especially at local level — Current fibre roll-out to not affect dark fibre market — Suppliers apply variegated price strategies.

Stuttgart, Germany — According to a recent research on the Dark Fibre market in Northern Europe, InfoCom found out that in Germany, only a few number of dark fibre suppliers — mainly players in the gas and power industries and to a lesser extent from the telecom sector — compete at regional and national levels. While fibre optic backbone deployments experienced a “boom” in 1999/2000, since then, acquisitions and bankruptcies have led to a significant consolidation in the market, where few players compete both at regional as well as national level.

Analysing the offers, the research revealed that to some extent, dark fibre is not a standard commercial product and is rather offered on-demand. The market appears rather fragmented also as far as pricing structures are concerned: price strategies are very heterogeneous, taking into account different aspects, sometimes the contract length or the connection lengths or even the payment terms. Dark fibre providers that have an extensive telecom portfolio tend to push alternative solutions, for instance from their portfolio of managed services, in order to overcome connection issues related to the “last mile” as well as achieve higher margins though services, which add mode value.

Assessing available offers according to the different routes, the research revealed that, in general, to cover all routes, players cooperate with each other and especially with utilities that provide a good local coverage and can even connect the smallest towns, if needed. Yet, in a number of large cities, some routes are oversupplied by dark fibre offers and are thus the stage of a very fierce competition.

Regional and city telecom carriers currently roll-out fibre optic infrastructure in Germany to support the rising FTTx/VDSL-based triple play service market; though these deployments do not concretely impact the dark fibre market. “If we consider the current fibre optic network roll-out” InfoCom Chief research Analyst commented, “this has very limited impact on dark fibre offering as it mainly interests residential areas; besides, telecom carriers are generally not interested in offering dark fibre”.

About this contribution:

This extract refers to one of InfoCom recent studies. InfoCom’s research activities go far beyond what is traditionally intended by telecom consultancy, covering also new telecom services and applications in telecom, Media and IT. If you wish to know more about InfoCom, do not hesitate to contact us. Talk to us. We listen.

About InfoCom:

InfoCom is a market research and consultancy company with over 20 years experience providing strategic analyses and planning assistance to stakeholders in the telecommunications, IT and multimedia industries. InfoCom’s independent and fact-based analyses highlight trends and opportunities, supporting decision makers to understand market dynamics in order to improve their competitive advantage.

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