Page 23 - SAMENA ELITE - January-May 2025

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Greece’s OTE Deploys Fixed Wireless to Stem Rural Churn to Starlink
et al

Greece’s OTE Group is turning to OTE to more deeply tap into the (FY25), following drops in revenue in
5G fixed wireless access (FWA) as Greek government’s Gigabit Voucher FY23 (-2%) and FY24 (-0.4%).
a reinforcement for its broadband scheme, which went live in late- FY24 also saw the operator report
business in less populated areas, 2024 and is distributing ‘connectivity a 0.1%-fall in its Greek broadband
following a recent step-back on vouchers’ of up to €200 to users subscriber number, to 2.35 million. The
fixed revenue and rise in churn to signing up to 24-month contracts on year’s sales decrease was part-fed
new challengers, such as Elon Musk’s faster broadband services, whether by lapping of a late-2023 discount
Starlink. wired or wireless. scheme related to e-billing, but OTE
also cited “challenging trends in
The Cosmote 5G WiFi offering — Cosmote 5G WiFi’s 5G SA foundation legacy services” as a factor.
debuted in late-January, using the 5G will enable it to offer “stable
standalone (SA) core OTE introduced performance for a large number of As well as the FWA deployment, the
in June last year — will “improve users, and low latency”, said OTE. Its operator hopes to drive the return to
connectivity in fibre-under-served results documentation confirmed the growth through wider fibre-to-the-
areas, minimising customer losses to service is based on network slicing, home (FTTH) buildout and uptake, and
alternative infrastructures like satellite but did not go into more detail on its adoption of both the Gigabit Voucher
or FMS [fixed-mobile substitution]”, architecture or resource allocation scheme and parallel Smart Readiness
said Chief Executive Kostas Nebis on (including whether it borrows any programme, which offers subsidies for
the operator’s annual results call. ideas from sister business T-Mobile in-building connections. OTE also
US’. debuted a higher-end 3Gbps fibre
Nebis conceded that OTE has offering in January, to boost higher-
been losing “some customers” that The FWA service is one way OTE’s end user spend, hopes to gain extra
are restricted by a substandard management is seeking to regain impetus in the wholesale space on
copper connection and/or no fibre growth in its retail fixed business in the back of recent access deals with
availability, “especially in the summer the current year, to 31 December 2025 rivals Vodafone and Nova.
months” — and confirmed Starlink was
one of the alternative providers that
were cashing in.

He estimated that the US satco had
secured only about 30,000 users in
Greece since launching in the country
during early-2023, but was “for
sure… eating up part of the potential
broadband base”, particularly in
property developments targeted
at holidaymakers and second
homeowners.
Nonetheless, Nebis said OTE had
“high expectations” for the new FWA
service as a retention and acquisition
tool, saying it will act as a “bridge” to
higher-speed connections and help it
“manage better these customers until
fibre is rolled out in their territory”.
As it develops, it may also enable

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