Mobile giant O2 today mocked rivals Vodafone and BT for entering the “quad play” market, accusing them of doing it for defensive reasons rather than for customers and insisting it has no need to follow them.
Vodafone is launching in broadband and pay-TV and BT is launching in mobile amid talk of a price war as both firms offer a quad play of services — broadband, home phone, TV and mobile.
But O2 boss Ronan Dunne said: “Isn’t that two people in the playground saying mine’s bigger than yours? What’s the customer proposition?”
He noted quad play has been available for seven years — with Virgin Media and, more recently, TalkTalk — yet it has had little impact on O2, which won a near-record number of new mobile customers in the last quarter.
“Do I see a massive lurch in the market to a converged offering? I don’t see any evidence of an appetite for that,” said Dunne.
“Don’t mistake this for complacency or arrogance,” he added. “I’m not suggesting BT won’t have an impact.”
He said O2, Britain’s second biggest mobile company behind EE, will watch its rivals’ moves closely and could still enter TV. “We rule out nothing.”
However, he was scathing about Vodafone’s recent plans to go into pay-TV in Britain, suggesting it was just following BT’s strategy in a case of “I don’t have one of my own so I have copied someone else’s”.
Dunne, who was speaking at an O2 dinner for the media, argued a quad play of services and price cuts alone are unlikely to be enough for his rivals to differentiate themselves and grab market share.
Choosing a mobile operator tends to be a “personal” rather than a “household budget” decision, he said, and many O2 users value its Priority Moments loyalty programme that offers concert and sport tickets and restaurant discounts.
He added he expects strong demand for “wearable” devices such as connected watches and health bands this Christmas.
O2 will be able to watch the quad play market closely as it struck a deal earlier this week to let TalkTalk customers use its mobile network.
Dunne said O2’s debt-laden parent company Telefonica has flexibility for takeover deals after paying off €16 billion of loans.
