Vodafone's head of consumer marketing Conor Carmody
Vodafone has revealed it has seen an 80pc surge in video traffic on its fixed and mobile networks in Ireland in the last 12 months. In addition, the arrival of Netflix in Ireland a fortnight ago has again led to a further surge in video traffic, the company says.
Last week, Vodafone’s Irish division reported that after three years it has achieved the milestone of 200,000 paying customers for landline and broadband services. In terms of mobile, Vodafone has 2.5m subscribers.
Vodafone entered the fixed line market in Ireland initially by acquiring Perlico in 2008 and in 2009 it signed a deal to take over BT’s unbundled local loop (LLU) network in Ireland. At the time the deal was signed BT had 22 unbundled local exchanges; today it is understood that BT and Vodafone together have unbundled 60 local exchanges, an additional 48.
Vodafone Ireland’s head of consumer marketing Conor Carmody told Siliconrepublic.com that of the 200,000 landline subscribers, some 60,000 connect directly with unbundled local exchanges, a 20,000 increase since the deal was signed with BT three years ago.
“We are finding that customers of our mobile products are becoming aware of our broadband and landline telephone bundles and see sense in merging it all into one affordable package,” Carmody explained.
Surge in video traffic – will Vodafone enter TV business?
In terms of market trends, he said that in the last 12 months there has been an 80pc increase in video traffic on its overall networks. “This is largely because people are watching more TV on their computers, tablets and smartphones.
“The main contributors to this are YouTube and the RTÉ Player and significantly in recent weeks, Netflix.
“We are also seeing people making video calls via Skype on the network.”
I asked Carmody would Vodafone consider launching its own video and TV products online?
“That’s always a possibility and it’s always under discussion. If we ever did, the key would be to crack the correct business model,” he said.
