Jazztel will counter Telefónica’s challenges with new plans. Its president, Leopoldo Fernández Pujals, announced in an interview that he would increase the current ADSL speed by eight without increasing the price. It thus reproduces Telefónica’s intentions to double the basic broadband Internet connection. Jazztel will launch in July an integrated voice call service plus ADSL at 4 megabytes at around 33 euros, taking the modality into account. “Even the cost could be lower, depending on how the market evolves,” Fernández Pujals ventured. Its offer, today, is 512 kilobytes per second at 39.95 euros.
By then, said the Spanish-Cuban businessman, “we will have direct coverage of 50 percent of the national territory.” In addition, he assured that by the end of the year “we will be present at 80%”. At present, Jazztel’s infrastructure reaches 17% and the rest is covered by the lines it leases from Telefónica, which is called loop decoupling. To this end, the company will spend between 100 and 150 million euros for the deployment of the network.
But the response to Telefónica, which holds 72% of the ADSL market, does not stop there. If the operator chaired by César Alierta plans to increase the speed of its “Premium” service from 4 to 8 megabytes, Jazztel is studying the possibility of offering throughout this year a high speed of 16 megabytes. “Its price would be around 60 euros,” said Fernández Pujals, who added that “since April the company will be able to offer this speed”.
With these products and an aggressive advertising campaign, Jazztel expects its market share to reach 3% in 2005, compared to 1.5% today. For the moment, the founder of Telepizza is optimistic about the evolution of the company. Since its arrival in September of last year, new customer registrations have increased from 100 to 400 per day in total. In its forecast, it is established that by the end of this year, registrations will reach 1,800 per day in the residential sector and 400 in the commercial sector.
Telephone television. One of the central axes of the operator’s strategy is the launch of a new product each month. Asked what will be next, Pujals does not answer, but specifies that in the second half of 2005, the company will launch a television service via the telephone network. For that, you need a content provider, who will start searching in February.
All these projects, adds Pujals, will be the basis for the future growth of the company which, according to their estimates, will reach 6% of the market in 2007, with a turnover of more than 1000 million euros, a profit. before taxes and a net profit of 120 and 50 million euros, respectively 1 Mega ADSL with Wifi router + Free calls to landlines + MP3 for 32.95 €.