TIM Group has lowered its investments in telecom network during the third quarter of 2019.
TIM said its Capex dropped 8.7 percent to 795 million euros. TIM’s Capex in Italy was 585 million euros (–13.3 percent) despite starting preparation for 5G network.
TIM’s infrastructure allows Italy to rank above the European average with 90 percent fixed ultra-broadband network coverage against European average of 80 percent.
TIM’s 4G coverage reaches about 99 percent of the Italian population and its fiber coverage extends to 80 percent of the population. TIM’s 5G national coverage is expected by 2025.
TIM’s network offers speed of 100-1000Mbps to >40 percent of population and >50Mbps to nearly 80 percent of population.
TIM Brazil’s subscriber base has dipped by 1.4 million to 54.5 million at September 30, 2019. TIM Brazil lost 2.4 million pre-paid customers and added 1 million post-paid customers. Post-paid customers accounted for 39.0 percent of the customer base at September 30, 2019, as compared with 36.2 percent in December 2018.
The total number of TIM mobile lines in Italy was 31.3 million in September, slightly down compared to the previous quarter, with an improved churn rate compared to the third quarter of last year (5.4 percent compared to 7.6 percent in 3Q 2018).
Total service revenues dropped by 244 million euros or 5.7 percent to 4,061 million euros, due to the significant reduction in low or zero-margin International Wholesale contracts started at the beginning of the year.
TIM Italy’s mobile ARPU increased from 12.5 euros per line/month in the previous quarter to 12.9 euros.
TIM Italy’s revenues totaled 9,986 million euros in nine months, posting 4.5 percent decrease from 10,453 million euros in the first nine months of 2018.
TIM Brazil
TIM Brazil’s mobile ARPU was 23.3 reais in the first nine months of 2019, growing by over 5 percent due to an overall repositioning on the post-paid segment and commercial initiatives aimed at boosting use of data and the customer’s average spending.
TIM Brazil’s revenues for the first nine months of 2019 rose by 267 million reais or 2.1 percent increase to 12,791 million reais.
TIM Brazil CEO Pietro Labriola said TIM Live’s customer base reached close to 540,000 clients almost 30 percent in FTTH. TIM reached 1.9 million households covered with fiber technology. Its FTTH network recovery plan will be completed in order to add 16 more cities until 2020.
Investment in TIM Live represented almost 10 percent of the Capex in the nine months of 2019.
TIM Brazil’s engineers are covering 2.5 times more households than a year ago. TIM Brazil is also expanding transport network. TIM Brazil has increased backbone and backhaul kilometers of fiber by more than 10 percent in the past 12 months. It expanded 4G coverage driven by 700 MHz rollout with more than 40 percent growth in cities covered with these frequencies.
TIM Brazil’s VoLTE reached 3,300 cities. Its narrowband IoT network reached 3,000 cities and is the largest in the country.
“Our journey to 5G started more than a year ago. Our network preparations are moving fast, with more data centers for content and network virtualization being deployed, 5G-ready equipment being sold through the migration,” TIM Brazil CEO Pietro Labriola said during the recent analyst call.
TIM Brazil conducted real 5G network tests, on three different locations with three different vendors. TIM Brazil will equip more than 10 stores with 5G equipment and devices ahead of the 5G launches.
TIM Brazil implemented the Naked SIM platform that allows TIM to sell any type of plan on any type of the channel doing, all the network provision in real time. TIM Brazil is also working on a Next Best Action approach to better customize offers to cluster of its customer base.
