New growth
In spite of increased saturation, Swisscom is expecting continued moderate volume growth in certain relevant markets (among them postpaid mobile telephony, broadband and IT services) in Switzerland and Italy. The main driving forces behind this are modest population growth, the increase in use of ICT in a wide variety of industries and the relatively low broadband penetration in Italy. Nevertheless, price pressure remains at a high level, to the extent that Swisscom expects a slight drop in market revenue on the whole, particularly in the telecommunications market.
Through the further development of its core business, Swisscom intends to realise growth opportunities through, for example, the further expansion of its TV/entertainment offering, growth in the wholesale sector, the expansion of its digital portfolio and, in the SME sector, through the successful marketing of ICT products. The solutions business for digital security, business applications and the cloud in the business customer market offer further growth opportunities. Swisscom is launching new digital services in selected areas. Some of these, such as digital services for SMEs (e.g. localsearch), Swisscom’s FinTech operations and its use of blockchain as a supporting technology, are based on new business models. When selecting growth areas, Swisscom is guided by future customer requirements, focuses on future-oriented business models with substantial growth and is making increased use of partnerships. In addition to the activities mentioned above, Italian subsidiary Fastweb is playing a key role in the realisation of growth opportunities. Swisscom is improving Fastweb’s market position. Thanks to the acquisition of Spektrum and the rollout of 5G, Fastweb can strengthen its convergence offering by expanding its current ultra-fast broadband network (with fixed wireless access and its own 5G infrastructure in selected urban hotspots). Growth has also resulted from the existence of a convergent product portfolio based on transparency, fairness and simplicity, the further development of the mobile communications market, the expansion of the business customer portfolio by means of horizontal solutions in relation to the cloud and digital security, high-quality service and the utilisation of partnerships.