Sunrise records profit slump

 Despite more customers, the Sunrise telecommunications group is losing out on profits and sales. Net profit plummeted by 40 percent to CHF 27 million in the first quarter. Sales fell by 4.9 percent to 447 million. Sunrise announced in a press release on Thursday that price cuts in mobile telephony and customer losses in the fixed network business were to blame for the decline in business. Sunrise blames Swisscom for the losses in the fixed network business. The latter is still charging excessive prices for network access, for example for broadband access for fast Internet. However, direct payments to Swisscom fell by 12.2 percent to CHF 77 million compared to the same quarter last year. 

Only the number of customers developed positively compared to the same quarter of the previous year. It increased by 1.8% to 2.28 million. Growth was particularly strong in the mobile telephony segment. Following an increase of almost 10 percent, Sunrise now has 1.55 million customers to serve. The company attributes the growth of 138,000 customers to the abolition of the basic fee for mobile telephony. 

On Thursday, Sunrise also reaffirmed its intention to further expand its infrastructure. However, investments fell by 17.2 percent in the first quarter of 2008. According to the Swiss company, which belongs to the Danish telecoms company TDC, the reasons for this were the more difficult construction conditions for mobile phone antennas and the more difficult access to the data network by Swisscom. In order to ensure the rapid liberalization of the telecoms market in Switzerland, Sunrise is now calling for the establishment of a company to ensure non-discriminatory access to Swisscom's network.