The Salt boss wants to surpass competitors Sunrise and Swisscom

Anyone who visits the website of Telekom company Salt will be overwhelmed by discounts. Many mobile phone subscriptions offer a discount of 55 to 70 percent. This is no exception.

With low prices, the smallest of the three providers with its own mobile network has been taking market share from competition from Sunrise and Swisscom for years. Over the past decade, Salt has acquired the most new mobile phone subscribers relative to its size.

How well are you doing?

The pattern repeated itself last year: Salt grew with almost 120,000 new subscription customers, almost as strong as the larger providers Sunrise with 132,000 and Swisscom with 129,000.

In terms of the number of subscriptions, Salt will probably have achieved a market share of more than 17 percent for the first time in ten years. By comparison, according to calculations by CH Media based on federal figures, Swisscom had a share of about 57 percent, Sunrise over 25 percent.

For the telecom company, owned by French billionaire Xavier Niel, this strategy also pays off financially. Turnover increased by 4.0 percent to 1.12 billion francs and operating profit rose by 4.7 percent to 573 million francs, Salt announced on Tuesday. Salt’s turnover therefore grew faster than that of its competitors: Sunrise had to record a decline in turnover in 2023, Swisscom was only able to grow slightly thanks to its foreign activities.

What is success based on?

This was not only helped by the strong growth in the mobile communications industry, but also the TV and internet offerings that Salt offers are significantly cheaper than the competition.

At the end of last year, the product, which was launched in 2018, already had 223,000 customers. However, Salt only offers fiber optic connections. There are currently more than two million households, by the end of 2025 there will be three million and by the end of 2030 about four million. Salt does not build these networks itself, but rents space from Swisscom.

The fact that Salt managed to improve the quality also contributed to the good result. While this requires investment in customer service, it also delivers savings. The number of telephone calls about problems decreased. The share of customers whose problem was resolved on the first contact increased.

What are the biggest challenges?

Strong price war with Yallo

Zou wants to stay on the growth path and focus on quality. However, Sunrise in particular is waging an aggressive price war with its second brand Yallo, says Salt boss Max Nunziata. For Salt, this is difficult to avoid and will continue to undermine price competition.

In an interview with CH Media, Nunziata says that high discounts dilute the value of the products – but they work:

However, for legal reasons, it is not allowed to offer products with permanent discounts. So salt rotates – and is also based on the holidays. “Before the holidays, products with roaming services are often offered, and after the holidays, domestic subscriptions are more common,” says Nunziata.

He also wants to grow thanks to stationary stores. Opening a store has never been worth it. The office network has grown from 88 to 108 stores over the past five years.

Now Salt is going one step further: this year, two larger flagship stores will open: one on Rue du Rhône in Geneva and one on Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich.

What about Starlink?

However, an innovation turns out to be complicated. Salt is the first European mobile operator to announce a partnership with Elon Musk’s company Starlink. In the future, Salt subscribers will still be able to use their smartphones in areas where there is no mobile network. The plan is for the service to be activated for SMS at the end of this year and for voice and certain data services next year.

However, there are still many legal issues and questions regarding the use of frequencies that need to be resolved – not only with the regulatory authorities in Switzerland, but also those in neighboring countries. For example, the aim is to prevent Swiss Salt customers from accessing the Starlink service abroad.

“The downside of innovation is that the rules are not yet clear,” says Nunziata. “We cannot force the authorities to work at a certain speed.” After all, Starlink has proven that the technology works.

(aargauerzeitung.ch)