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Greece - Market Intelligence Report
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Market Intelligence Reports provide an invaluable mix of vital market data and background information, including telecoms regulation. Greece's telecommunications market continues to be dominated by the incumbent fixed-line and mobile communications operator, Hellenic Telecommunications Organization (OTE), a state company that has been privatised in stages over the ten-year period spanning 1996 and 2006, and which should see a further tranche of shares go on offer later in 2007. The Greek government retains a 36% stake in the company and may well sell as much as 20% of the company in the forthcoming sale. However, with the state keen to retain managerial control of the company, few if any strategic partners will be interested in bidding for the stake. Indeed, Telekom Austria, which previously had expressed serious interest in the stake, has now withdrawn. As one of the least developed markets within the European Union, Greece had a derogation on the EU-sponsored timetable for the complete liberalisation of its telecommunications sector, from January 1998 to January 2001. Although the alternative infrastructure market had been opened to competition in March 1998, the first licences for the provision of fixed infrastructure for liberalised services were not granted until the second half of 2000. At the time of writing, there remained little substantial competition in the fixed-line telephony market, a situation exacerbated by delays in introducing number portability services and the comparative tardiness on the part of the national regulatory authority in completing its analyses of key service markets and identifying operators with significant market power (SMP). The fixed-line market could benefit from a degree of consolidation apparent in 2006/07: ISP Hellas On Line (HoL) has agreed to acquire metropolitan network operator Attica Telecommunications and is itself reportedly establishing a fibre-optic backbone with wireless operator Vodafone; alternative fixed-line operator Lannet Communications has acquired virtual telephony operator Columbia Telecom and broadband operator TelePassport, and has teamed up with wireless broadband operator Craig Wireless Hellas; and, wireless operator TIM Hellas has fallen under the control of Egyptian telecommunications entrepreneur Naguib Sawiris, who now wants to merge TIM Hellas with his other Greek investment, fixed-line operator TELLAS. TIM Hellas already has a limited fixed-line presence, through its 2006 acquisition of Q-Telecom. In the mobile communications sector, there are four discrete wireless telephone services, operated by three companies. CosmOTE is owned by OTE, while Vodafone Group of the UK owns Vodafone-Panafon, and investment companies owned by Mr Sawiris own TIM Hellas. The fourth service is provided by Q-Telecom, through TIM Hellas. CosmOTE, Vodafone-Panafon, and TIM Hellas all own third-generation (3G) mobile telecommunications licences. A fourth 3G licence was to have been auctioned in 2006, but no further developments have been reported. There were 14.082 million cellular and UMTS customers in Greece at the end of 2006, up from 12.448 million in 2005.
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