Waoo!

FTTH CASE STUDY

A fast emerging brand in Denmarks fibre access sector

FTTH company Waoo! is one of the leading names in Denmarks rapidly developing superfast broadband market.
Waoo! was established in 2010 to manage the fibre access networks of 15 of Denmarks largest energy companies under a single identity. Less than a year later, Waoo! is a well recognised brand up and down the country, the constituent networks between them reaching one in four Danish homes with superfast fibre-based internet, television and telephony services. There are 1.7 million households in our coverage area, and by the end of 2010 we had passed 602,000 of these with fibre, says Waoo! CEO Anders Christjansen. We have now got 155,000 households actively using the network, 30,000 more when you take into account the associated antenna connections for TV distribution that we also manage. We added around 20,000 households to our customer base in the last four months of 2010, so we are growing fast. Although it owns and operates an FTTH network of its own in Copenhagen, with a little over 14,000 customers, Waoo!s main role is developing and marketing products to run on the combined networks of the 15 utilities, a job formerly managed by three different companies. consequent cost reductions have been to the benefit of customers. Another reason for Waoo!s speedy headway in a competitive market, explains Christjansen, has been the competitive pricing of its services, particularly against non-fibre alternatives. Our lowest speed of connection is 30Mb, for the equivalent of 22.5 Euro a month, he says. This is a good price compared to other services on the market, positioning us as having not so much the cheapest broadband on offer but certainly the best price performance.

Deployment
Network availability: The 15 networks between them pass around a quarter of Danish households, around 602,000 by the end of 2010 out of 1.7m in their joint catchment area. There are a total of 2,584,479 households in Denmark. Penetration: Around 155,000 households were actively using the network at the end of 2010, with 30,000 more when antenna connections for TV distribution, also managed by Waoo!, are counted. These customers get their TV services supplied through antenna cables, but receive their signal over fibre. Technology/architecture: FTTH in either a PON or point-to-point configuration, depending on the utility operating the network.

General Information
Infrastructure owner: The 15 FTTH networks managed and marketed by Waoo! are all still owned by the 15 utility companies that built them. Location: Various locations around Denmark, particularly concentrated in Jutland, Funen, North and South Zealand, Lolland and Falster. Network status: Operational.

He says Waoo!s competition includes ADSL from Danish incumbent telco TDC, which reaches 80% of Danish households, as well as coax networks from the countrys cable companies, which cover around half the population: We offer way better speeds than these, and cant be matched at all by DSL, he says. The future development of the physical network remains

We have already established a brand and streamlined it across three main product types TV, telephony and Internet, says Christjansen. We have had to unify three different systems to achieve this, with resulting cost reductions and improvements in quality. We have been moving fast since our set up, first marketing our product in September 2010. We have been able to expand customer numbers because of the effectiveness of having one brand and one portfolio. That has had a significant impact. All

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the responsibility of the individual utility companies, he explains: These are owned by Danish citizens, in other words the consumers of the services, he says. The aggressiveness of future rollouts will depend on the individual region in question. I would expect some of the utilities to have reached 100% of people in their catchment by 2015. Other regions will base their network plans more on a cost benefit analysis.

success of this type of operation.

End-user Services
Services: Most subscribers take a triple play bundle of TV, telephony and Internet services. Waoo! is Denmarks largest IPTV service provider. Pricing: Basic Internet connectivity starts from a lowest speed for a 30Mbps of the equivalent of 22.5 a month. The highest speed of connection is 90Mbps.

Business Case
Investment: No public subsidy for the deployment, with all infrastructure paid for by network owners. Number of years to ROI: Each network operating utility has its own business case. Business model: Waoo! is a product and marketing service provider. The networks it manages are owned by utility companies who buy services from Waoo!.

Christjansen says there are elements to the Waoo! set up that mark it out from many other FTTH deployments: No public money has been put into the rollout, only investment from private business, he explains. Another major advantage we enjoy is being owned by utility companies. They are accustomed to investment plans that run over a long period of time. A long term approach to return on investment is important to the

So what happens next? Christjansen says he expects continued rollout of the networks, increased penetration of services and the development of more products: Our internet product is unchallenged, the best on the market, but our TV service on the other hand needs to be developed further, and that is not just a matter of technology, he says. There has perhaps been too much focus overall on the technology side, and that will change over time and the emphasis put back onto developing a more personalised service offer. I see the future as exciting for us, but I would not say necessarily easy. At least our services are based on a future-proofed end game technology.
Written in May 2011 Photos provided by Waoo! and Danish Energy Association Contact us on info@ftthcouncil.eu

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