Which VoIP services do you offer in Denmark?
On the residential market we are providing basic services, which mean the telephone line and all the residential features such as call forwarding and unified messaging etc. On the SME side we provide hosted PBX solution, hosted in Copenhagen.
Denmark is a very competitive telecom market. What is your strategy to attract customers?
On the enterprise side we have an open architecture that makes it possible for the business manager to develop his own features on his side. On the residential side we try to provide on-screen services such as e banking, travel information, booking information, and all those things. So the strategy there is to provide value added services which are not 100% IP telephony stuff. But we feel we can get more customers if we do that.
Why not customize business calling features for enterprise customers and make more money in the process?
Some applications can be done like that. But in general what we have foundis that customization in hosted PBX environment is a time consuming process: contacting vendors, shortlisting them and choosing a vendor that will then take two to four months to finish the task. Our experience says it is better to offer open APIs to the enterprise IT manager and let him take care of it.
What prospects do you see in VoIP services in Denmark?
There are only approximately 150 thousand residential VoIP customers in this country and we are still having 3.2 million of them on TDM. However, I see VoIP services taking off in the next 12 months. Why I am saying next 12 months is because we haven’t done extensive advertising so far. We have done direct advertising to approximately to half a million consumers in the country. We didn’t do extensive advertising because we wanted to get a number of things in place; we needed to confirm that every thing is running perfectly. We have reached that stage now where we believe everything is running perfectly and the only thing we need to do is getting customers. So the next 6 months will see a major boost in advertising campaign.
What is the VoIP regulatory scenario like in Denmark?
It is fairly liberalized in this country. There are certain rules that apply such as number ranges, signaling point code, and international signaling code. You still have to apply for many things to get things running but no license is required to go into telephony business in this country.
There are still number of compliances that you have to do before offering these services like legal intercept which we do and we actually think that we have one of the best legal intercepts not only in Denmark but in the rest of Europe. We also comply with local number portability which is also a requirement.
What sort of competition do you get from TDC, the incumbent there?
TDC is not really into VoIP. All their subscriber lines are still TDM.
What is the single most important trend in VoIP worldwide?
It is fixed-mobile convergence, I think.
Tell us about your IP TV trial?
We have been testing IPTV for one and a half years now and we are not satisfied with a number of things. That’s the reason why we haven’t deployed it. However I do believe that we should be able to go into IPTV production by the end of the year.
Within Scandinavia, Denmark has not shown much eagerness in migrating from TDM to IP while as Norway and Sweden are far ahead in migration projects. What are the reasons?
From the network migration perspective, I don’t think Denmark is behind. From retails perspective, I think support is an issue. Three years ago in Denmark we had new IPTV companies coming up as a one month company and delivering services without any support and without any quality of service. We had 25 thousand people that migrated instantly to VoIP in Denmark and they all went back to TDM because there was not support available due to near free services.
VoBB in Denmark started with voice over ATM. Why do you think that model did not survive?
Well, because you had no associated offerings in TV and other data services. So IP was obviously the way ahead.
How do you convince a customer in Denmark to use VoBB when the price differential as compared to PSTN is not very high?
That’s why we are trying to build a bundle.
How do you fight the low quality perception of VoIP?
I think quality is actually not an issue as you would know. But you have to offer a good customer service. We are trying to concentrate on that to win over new customers.
Can you share with us some subscriber numbers of Primo Telekom?
What I can tell you is that we are aiming around two percent of the Danish market.
