Teles Wireless Broadband Managing Director Andreas Kruger believes the United Kingdom is a potentially lucrative market for satellite broadband services. The company hopes to exploit the success of BSkyB in the satellite television space and provide a compelling offer to users where there is no terrestrial alternative.

Teles announced Aug. 4 it plans to bring a nationwide satellite broadband service to the United Kingdom, establishing a subsidiary, Teles SkyDSL UK Ltd., in Birmingham, England. The broadband service will be broadcast in the United Kingdom using the Eurobird 3 satellite, meaning SkyDSL can be received with the same dish used to receive BskyB’s signal as long as customers have a dual-feed reception system, Kruger said.

“In the U.K., affinity to satellite services is higher than in other countries,” Kruger said. “BSkyB has close to 8 million subscribers. That is why we consider the U.K. to have great potential for SkyDSL.”

The SkyDSL service will be very attractive to households that do not have access to terrestrial broadband services, Kruger said. “The availability of terrestrial broadband is not an indicator for how many households can, in reality, receive broadband Internet access,” he said. “We know that a certain percentage cannot be catered for due to technical reasons. SkyDSL is the only access method that offers true country-wide coverage for broadband Internet access and at a very good price”

Pricing

Teles hopes its pricing scheme will help the company overcome the perception that satellite broadband services are too expensive to be attractive to customers, Kruger said. Teles has studied the pricing structure of broadband Internet access in the United Kingdom, and based on this market analysis, tried to come with packages that will strike a chord with users, he said. The starter package for SkyDSL is 4.57 British pounds ($8.20) a month, which includes services such as SkyRFD (request for download), SkyEmail and SkyFIP (favorite Internet pages). Customers will not be charged a set-up fee under the promotion, though users without a BSkyB dish will have to pay about 58.90 pounds ($106) for equipment.

Kruger believes the pricing for the service compares favorably with terrestrial alternatives. “Satellite is the most expensive data transfer medium there is,” he said. “However, we as a company absorb these costs. We spoil the customer with very attractive prices for the SkyDSL packages. Our pricing structure is comparable to terrestrial broadband offers and similar to them in terms of the contract duration, product design etc. The customer will be used to the concepts and can easily familiarise himself with SkyDSL as an alternative offering to terrestrial broadband.”

Kruger is confident that Teles will be able to develop a strong subscriber base in the United Kingdom. “We will rent further satellite transponders if the market develops positively, which we are convinced of,” he said.

–Mark Holmes

(Maria Dehmer, Teles Wireless Broadband Internet, m.dehmer@teles.de)