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Telco reportedly planning to repeat aggressive pricing strategy that helped it disrupt the French market.
Iliad is drawing up an aggressive pricing strategy with a view to accumulating a 25% share of the Italian mobile market.
That’s according to sources cited by Reuters on Tuesday, who said the telco plans to launch simple, transparent tariffs with no hidden costs.
"Iliad is planning to quickly grab about 10% of the market in the next two-to-three years through very aggressive offers, with the aim to eventually reach 25%," said one of the sources, in the report.
Iliad sparked a price war in its home market France when it launched low-cost mobile services under the Free Mobile brand in 2012. It ended 2016 with 12.7 million customers, good enough for an 18% share of the market.
Last July, Iliad set its sights on Italy when it agreed to acquire assets, including 35 MHz of spectrum, that were divested when 3 Italia and Wind agreed to combine their operations into a joint venture. Iliad’s deal also included an option to invoke network-sharing and roaming agreements with the merged entity. It plans to launch services either at the end of 2017 or in early 2018.
Some commentators argue that Iliad will not be able to repeat the same trick in Italy that it performed in France because the Italian mobile market has already gone through a price war, making it harder for the telco to compete on price.
However, Reuters’ sources said that Iliad has "the capacity to do it and it will be very difficult for rivals who have very rigid cost structures to adapt fast enough."
