O2 Germany have just confirmed that they are spreading their communications wings beyond mobile phones, by moving into DSL, and fixed line voice provision.
The move had been discussed for some time following their take-over by Telefonica, but until today, the date of 27 October hadn’t been confirmed.
There are three levels of offerings – €35/month for a 4Mb/s service; €50 including a flat-rate phone service; or €55 for 16Mb/s and flat-rate. Current O2 mobile subscribers will pay €5 less/month.
What about O2 UK
The obvious question for a UK-based publication was if O2 UK was planning the same.
An O2 spokesperson said that she understood that O2 UK was in discussion with broadband providers in the UK, although no dates were expected.
It is absolutely no surprise that a mobile operator is moving in to providing fixed line services too – If they don’t, they’ll be left hanging in the wind, as all of the other companies offer a single bill for all their communication services.
Package
O2 Germany have identified two reasons for people not taking up a DSL service at home. While early adopters and singles have embarrassed DSL, strangely families have not been signing up, as they’ve been worried about the complexity of installing and configuring the service.
To tackle the installation, O2 have come up with a completely automated install DSL modem/router. Simply by plugging the unit into the telephone line, the unit will self-configure. In the few cases that this doesn’t work, they will offer to send someone to the house. This shows their level of confidence in the self-install – sending out engineers is very expensive, especially at the low monthly prices they’re offering.
O2 Germany said they weren’t frantic about gaining subscribers and hoped to gain 100k-150k DSL customers within the first 6 months. They currently have 10.2m mobile subscribers.