Ziggo BV is working on a mobile-phone service that may stoke a price war in one of Europe’s most competitive markets.

The company must start offering customers before January 2012 the 100,000 mobile-phone numbers it received from the Opta regulator this year, Harriet Garvelink, a spokeswoman for the agency, said in an interview. Ziggo may begin service by leasing network capacity from another operator such as Royal KPN NV, said Wolfgang Specht, an analyst at WestLB AG.

“Building a network on their own requires time and large investments,” said Specht, “To enter this game it is quite difficult.”

As demand for high-definition content and broadband Internet soars, cable companies are stepping up combined offers of television, Internet and phone services to increase revenue from each customer. Ziggo’s planned entry into the wireless market would add pressure to leader KPN, which in April cut its profit forecast and announced as many as 5,000 job cuts.

The Ziggo 4 venture last year obtained space on the 2.6 gigahertz radio frequency for mobile broadband applications.

“If we’re going to enter the mobile market, it would be step by step,” said Martijn Jonker, a Ziggo spokesman. Ziggo will give more details on its wireless plan this year, he said.

bron:Bloomberg