VIDEO INTERVIEW: Mats Granryd, chief executive of Tele2, told Mobile World Live he is “not a big believer” in quadplay, simply because he doesn’t see many consumers as being all that interested in buying bundled packages of fixed and mobile services.

“We don’t see customers asking for a fixed-mobile convergence [FMC] play,” said Granryd.

Tele2 is an alternative operator with a presence in nine countries – including Sweden, the Netherlands and Kazakhstan – yet the operator’s boss still sees no groundswell of FMC support.

“The buying patterns [for fixed and mobile services] are completely different,” he said. “In places we have launched 4G, the mobile service is in fact a great replacement for the fixed service.”

Granyrd conceded that FMC could be attractive from a business perspective – the streamlining of operations – but was not yet convinced of its consumer appeal, although the Tele2 chief said he was still watching the quadplay market “very closely”.

Value champion
Tele2’s strategy to win market share in the past was to be a discounter and disrupter, but Granyrd says those days have gone. “For us to differentiate, we need to add more to our proposition, to be a value champion,” he said.

For the Tele2 chief, that means having a powerful and ubiquitous network, and to “challenge the industry from a business model perspective”. Not so much on price, he added, but to have large buckets of data and to be innovative, such as decoupling the SIM card from the handset.

Being a value champion also means more focus on customer care and transparency, which, Granyrd admitted, operators have not been very good at. “Unpleasant things, such as hidden fees and bill shock, drag the industry down,” he said.

Granyrd also spoke about Tele2’s Challenger Programme, and his aim to centralise more functions to create greater service flexibility and agility.

“Why have NOCs in each country and not one place? Why so many billing and data warehouse systems?” he asked. “The Challenger Programme is changing the way we deliver services to our consumers. It’s not necessarily about cutting cost, but that might come as a by-product. The real product is to make sure we are fit for the future, much more agile, and faster to respond to customer needs.”

Watch the full video here.