Yoigo, Spain's fourth-largest mobile operator, has withdrawn from the quadruple-play market more than two years after launching bundles of fixed and mobile services.
The TeliaSonera-owned company originally launched quad-play services under the Fusion brand in October 2013 following a network sharing agreement with Telefónica. Under the deal, Telefónica's Movistar unit was permitted to use Yoigo's LTE network, while Yoigo in turn was able to use the Movistar Fusion brand for its own quad-play services.
Yoigo now says on its web site that it will stop selling the Fusion services from the end of January. According to Spanish publication Xataka Movil, the Yoigo Fusion plans were almost a "carbon copy" of Movistar's plans and offered little differentiation for users. Over time, they also failed to keep pace with the competitiveness of rival offerings.
Yoigo is now placing its bets firmly on the mobile-only market, and recently reinstated its popular 20 GB smartphone tariff. This means the company once again offers the largest mobile data allowance on the market.
In December, the company also said it will invest €25 million ($27 million) in the expansion of its 4G mobile network with the goal of covering 80 per cent of the Spanish population in May 2016.
However, it will also be the only one of the four mobile network operators that does not provide a multi-service plan: as well as Movistar Fusion, customers also have the choice of Vodafone One and Orange Kangaroo plans. Xataka Movil commented that Yoigo could return to the fixed-mobile convergence market at some time in the future, although for now its convergence adventure has come to an end.
Meanwhile the future of Yoigo continues to hang in the balance as TeliaSonera is still believed to be considering a sale of the operator.
In October, Bloomberg reported that a sale of Yoigo could fetch about €500 million. Local telecoms provider Masmovil Ibercom and private equity companies were reported to be among the potential buyers.
For more:
- see the Yoigo statement
- see this article from Xataka Movil
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