A new legal regulation is currently shaking up the TV access business. Market leader Vodafone, which is particularly affected by this, can now achieve a respectable success.
Vodafone has signed an infrastructure contract with one of Germany’s largest housing companies. From July 2024, 120,000 additional Vonovia residential units will have the opportunity to return to Vodafone’s cable fiber optic network, the companies announced on Monday.
The market segment has been highly competitive for many years. In 2013, the then UnityMedia, which is now part of Vodafone, lost the major contract from the then Deutsche Annington – now part of Vonovia – to Deutsche Telekom. The original plan was for Telekom to lay fiber optic cables to the rental apartments (FTTH). However, it generally stuck with conventional copper cables (DSL).
In future, affected Vonovia tenants will have another option to access the Internet via Vodafone’s cable network. For television reception, tenants will have the option of receiving the signal from the cable socket from Vodafone.
Difficult market environment
For Vodafone, the supply agreement represents a notable success in a difficult market environment. From July, television costs can no longer be passed on to tenants via additional costs. Instead of automatically having a TV connection through the landlord, tenants must find alternatives themselves or voluntarily join a collective order. This is made easier by the supply agreement.
The Vonovia tenants affected can conclude a direct contract with Vodafone at the time of the changeover if they want to receive TV via the cable network. Vonovia is in the process of informing the tenants affected by the change about the time of the changeover and the new offers, the Düsseldorf-based company announced. However, the tenants can also decide to keep their slower DSL connection and receive television over the Internet via Magenta TV from Deutsche Telekom or online services such as Zattoo and Waipu.
Source: Stern
