Swisscom loses SRG as a mobile customer

Swisscom has lost out: From 2020, SRG employees will make new calls with Sunrise (symbol image: Depositphotos, montage: Werbewoche.ch).

The Swiss B2B telecommunications market is fiercely competitive and is in a real cut-throat battle. Now, the publicly listed company Sunrise has managed to hook a big fish from the top dog Swisscom. As SRG confirmed to Werbewoche.ch, all 6,000 SRG employees and around 900 technical staff from TPC will be transferred to Sunrise next year. 

As part of its current cost-cutting efforts, SRG also looked at telecommunications services and had them offered by several players. According to spokesman Edi Estermann, with the new telecom provider, SRG can not only offer "an extremely future-oriented solution, but also save costs quite considerably at the same time. Estermann did not want to reveal how much the Swiss Radio and Television Company will save in concrete terms from 2020. But he said the tender had resulted in very good offers overall. In addition to Sunrise and Swisscom, Salt also put in a good effort, but like Swisscom, it was unable to convince SRG managers of its merits. Neither Swisscom nor Salt wanted to comment publicly on their departure. 

The offers and counter-offers were compared professionally and meticulously from a technological and economic point of view, according to the SRG spokesperson. SRG did not want to comment on the differences between the three applicants.

Joy for the challenger

Sunrise was less coy. According to Head of Communications Therese Wenger, the newly acquired major customer confirms Sunrise's strategy: "We are the leading challenger, focusing on the best network and service quality as well as innovative offerings." Sunrise has been consistently implementing this strategy for four years, which is now also reflected in its success in the business customer segment. 

Swiss Post, Nestlé, Axpo, Valora, Zurich Airport and Zurich University Hospital are also among Sunrise's customers. Is the number two simply much cheaper, or why has Sunrise now also been given the SRG's hand? "We were able to win these companies because of the quality of our services," says Wenger. The price also has to be right, but Sunrise is clearly a quality provider and not a low-cost provider.

Will SRF employees be harder to reach in the future?

However, some SRF employees are worried about precisely this quality. One SRF man is critical and says that from 2020, we can certainly expect less good reception on our smartphones. Another SRF employee finds it "crass" where SRG is starting to make savings everywhere.

According to Edi Estermann, the reactions of employees in the enterprise units were "within the expected range. The SRG head of communications confirms that there were numerous questions on the intranet that were and are still being answered by the IT and telephony experts.

Sunrise is the only mobile provider whose mobile network is certified by the leading benchmark, the Connect Netztest, has already been awarded three times in a row as "outstanding", says Therese Wenger in the direction of the SRF employees, who are not looking forward to the network change. "Not even the state-owned provider has achieved this award so far," the Sunrise spokeswoman said proudly. In the case of the 4G network, she said, the company leads the field with more than 96 percent area coverage of Switzerland and virtually 100 percent population coverage. In the 5G test by RootMetrics, Sunrise was also able to convince with the largest and fastest 5G network in Switzerland. "So SRF employees can look forward to a better network overall." 

Sunrise currently has over 3.6 million customers in contracts. In the mobile sector, the company has a market share of around 25 percent with 2.4 million customers. Compared with Sunrise, the ex-monopolist generates around six times more revenue and has twelve times more employees. In addition, with the Swiss government as majority shareholder, Swisscom has many privileges, Wenger points out. "That gives you an idea of how the size ratios are and at the same time what it means when Sunrise can assert itself with a customer like SRG."

SRG deal is also a matter for the boss

In order to win SRG as a new customer or to retain it, the CEOs of Swisscom and Sunrise were also involved. Werbewoche knows that talks are still being held between Swisscom and SRG at the highest level. Apparently, Swisscom's top management wants to find out exactly why the number 1 in the Swiss telco market could not prevail against Sunrise.

It is quite possible that the SRG deal will be exploited by Sunrise in the future in terms of advertising. The fact that companies such as Swiss International Airlines, Axpo, Tamedia or TX Group, CornerBank and others were very quickly willing to be integrated into Sunrise's B2B advertising campaign shows that Sunrise was able to convince them with its high quality. "We will certainly look at whether SRG would be available for advertising with them in due course," says Therese Wenger.