Ben's back in the Netherlands

[inquisitor]

Originally Posted by Ties Brants

It was pretty predictable that one of them would disapear. 5 was a little to much for a small country, even German only has 4.

It's especially the smaller and densly populated countries like NL, where it makes sense to run a 4th, 5th or even 6th network, because it's relatively cheap to roll-out a network, which further has a higher mean load and so amotizes faster.
In a territorial state like Germany you have to build up a lot of infrastructure to cover rural areas, where then only few users will generate few revenue. That's so expensive, that even after ten years of service O2 Germany still has a lot of gaps in their coverage map (see below), which are currently (nearly) closed by a national roaming agreement with T-Mobile (which is disabled in regions with sufficient O2 coverage).
Since O2 Germany and E-Plus, who both had only GSM1800-frequencies before, were granted EGSM900 frequencies in 2006, O2 aims to achieve nationwide coverage of their own network by end of 2009.

[Ties Brants]

Originally Posted by inquisitor

It's especially the smaller and densly populated countries like NL, where it makes sense to run a 4th, 5th or even 6th network, because it's relatively cheap to roll-out a network, which further has a higher mean load and so amotizes faster.

Also true of course, we are really spoiled with the coverage here. But 5 networks with only something like 16 million people means that it is also a lot harder to get enough customers.
To me the really interesting countries are Sweden, Norway, etc. really big countries with relatively few people but with a really impressive coverage. In north Sweden you see only mountains and snow but your cell phone will still work. But now I’m getting somewhat off topic….

[Hank C Burnette]

I also heard lately that KPN is gonna cease the brand HI (his "official" MVNO), and all the customers will be under KPN.

Does somebody knows more about that?

[Ties Brants]

Originally Posted by Hank C Burnette

I also heard lately that KPN is gonna cease the brand HI (his "official" MVNO), and all the customers will be under KPN.

Does somebody knows more about that?

Only in Dutch and it doesn't really say they will stop using Hi, it only says they want to focus on KPN and Telfort (which is almost the same, but not exactly....)

Ties

http://tweakers.net/nieuws/51714/kpn...rt-en-kpn.html