VDSL is a ‘lame duck’

It’s maybe no wonder Deutsche Telekom has fewer than 150,000 customers for its IPTV offer. According to Thomas Langer, who heads equity research into communications for investment bank WestLB, the German incumbent has been telling customers on its website that it can only guarantee them a service after they have placed an order.

When Langer told senior managers at Deutsche Telekom that such a clause probably wasn’t the best way to attract new business, he fully expected them to remove it. But nine months on it’s still there.

It shows just how bad Deutsche Telekom is at marketing and external communications, says Langer. And he doesn’t stop there, describing the high-speed VDSL network it is building to support IPTV as a ‘lame duck’. It’s little surprise to Langer that Deutsche Telekom is scaling back its national rollout to 40 cities, down from the 50 it planned to serve originally.

Chief executive René Obermann was quick to blame competition for a lacklustre set of quarterly results earlier today. But if his marketing managers don’t wake up soon, competition could be the last of his worries.