Disappointing MobilCom Announces Short 3G Delay

date: November 19, 2001 - source: BWCS

French owned German mobile operator MobilCom has announced plans to delay the launch of its 3G services in Germany. Its start date had been set for the middle of next year but it now says it will not begin signing up customers until the third quarter of 2002. Company chairman Gerhard Schmid put the delay down to handset shortages claiming that MobilCom will not receive its first UMTS phones until autumn next year.

Meanwhile the mobile service provider, which paid DM16.37 billion (US$7.6 billion) for its 3G licence in August 2000, reported a disappointing set of third quarter financial figures. In the three months to the end of September 2001 the company made a net loss of euros 42 million on revenues of euros 608.8 million (its second quarter revenue figure was euros 669.5 million). This brought the operator’s net loss for the first three quarters of 2001 to euros 114 million up from euros 34.2 million for the first nine months of 2000. Of more pressing concern was the less than impressive rise in its customer base. Analysts put MobilCom’s net customer additions at around 50,000 for the three month period. The expected figure was 150,000.

According to MobilCom however, it fares well in terms of contract customers. The company claims it has some 3.28 million contract customers, which, it says, puts it in third place in the German market for the higher spending contract customers. MobilCom’s figures show that T-Mobil has 7.38 million contract subscribers and Vodafone has 6.13 million customers signed up to contracts.

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