Mobilkom Austria looking towards joined up broadband

Telekom Austria has announced its results for Q2 2009. Its (i.e. Mobilkom's) mobile broadband subscriber base increased 43% y-o-y to 464,000 connections. Net adds during the quarter was 23,850. So growth is slowing somewhat. Of the 140,000 subs added in the last 12 months, only 17% came in Q2. Mind you, we can expect Q2 to be relatively slow anyway. Data now accounts for 35% of traffic-related revenues, up from 31% in Q2 2008.

Interesting quote from CEO Hannes Ametsreiter in the earnings call "I believe it's also important to have a look at not only mobile broadband and fixed broadband, but we are looking at total growth in future market broadband, there we can clearly see that we could increase our market share in that market." (Transcript at www.SeekingAlpha.com).

Telekom Austria has been keen to offer fixed-mobile broadband bundles, and indeed to also throw fixed and mobile voice into the mix too, under the "aon" brand. This is clearly a way to differentiate it from the keenly price MBB offers in Austria. As an example, the aonBreitband-Duo MBB/DSL plan costs €30/month including a free laptop. It's only a short step from that to the joined-up broadband that will become the de facto standard over the next couple of years.