PRODUCER PRICE INDEX FOR WIRED, WIRELESS, SATELLITE AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES IN GERMANY

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PRODUCER PRICE INDEX FOR WIRED, WIRELESS,
SATELLITE AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES IN
GERMANY
2008 MEETING OF VOORBURG GROUP

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DEFINITION OF THE SECTORTelecommunications
comprises transmission of

• voice, data, text, sound and video
• content, without being involved in its creation

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Structure of the German market

• 63.6 Bill EUR turnover in 2006, thereof
• - 20.5 Bill EUR fixed line telephony
• - 22.1 Bill EUR mobile Phone services
• - 0.8 Bill EUR leased lines
• - 7.4 Bill EUR interconnection
• - 3.0 Bill EUR cable TV
• - 9.8 Bill EUR other services

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Challenges of TC for price statistics

• Market characteristics
• rapid changes in technology
• permanent introduction of new services
• strong competition between companies
• large changes in the market position of companies

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Challenges of TC for price statistics

• Statistical challenges
• good timing for introduction/dropout of services
  
• Handling of changes in the condition of services
• quality adjustments for new services
• handling of bundles
• sensitiveness of data

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CPI and SPPI for TCcalculation within one unit

• Advantages
• persons have
• a good expertise of the markets
• good contacts to companies
• dual use of information
• but
• - separate calculation procedures for CPI and
  SPPI

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Development of the German SPPI for TC

• In 2006 coordinated work started to revise the
  CPI and to develop the SPPI
• Work in two stages
• obtaining the weighting data for CPI and SPPI
• developing the current surveys for SPPI
• The existence of a legal obligation made work
  much easier than in a previous pilot phase
  2003/2004

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Cooperation with the regulator

• In Germany the regulation authority is not
  allowed to pass individual statistical data to
  Destatis
• but Destatis got much technical advice from
  regulator
• regulators annual questionnaires were used as a
  basis for statistical questionnaires
• results were cross checked
• statistical questionnaires contained weighting
  information required for CPI and SPPI

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Business to Business- and Business to
All-approach

• SPPI-concepts

business

• OECD/Eurostat task force
• all sectors including the public sector or
  private householders
• EU-regulation 1158/2005 (concerning short term
  statistic ? STS-regulation)
• covers only services delivered to customers that
  are enterprises

to
all
business
business
to
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Business to Business- or Business to All-approach

• According to recent EU recommendations
• Germany follows the Business to All-approach

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Sample design

• - Cut-off sample of all companies with a turnover
  of 100 Mill EUR and more
• - sample comprises 30 companies
• - covers 95 of the whole turnover of TC

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Collection of information

• Unit value approach
• Units observed are
• - Turnover and
• - number of .. (e.g. participants) or
• - minutes of telephone calls or
• - GByte of data transmission

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Survey programme

• Division into two categories
• - Fixed line telephony and internet use
• - mobile telephony

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Main activities observed

• Fixed line telephony/internet use
• - Private final clients (minute prices by type of
  call, VoIP, flat rates, bundled products by types
  etc.)
• - Business final clients (same breakdown as
  above)
• - Wholesale of phone calls (specific breakdown
  per company)
• - Leased lines
• - Internet (e.g. provision and access via broad
  band/narrow band by type, flatrates)

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Main activities observed

• Mobile telephony
• - Private and business final clients (basic fee,
  calls into different nets, flatrates, prepaid
  cards etc.)
• - Wholesale (contract clients, prepaid cards,
  calls by nets, etc.)
• - National roaming (language, SMS, MMS, etc.)
• - International roaming (see above)

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Flat rates and bundled products

• - Increasing importance since 2006
• - flat rates common for fixed line telephony,
  mobile phone, Internet
• - bundled products mainly fixed line telephony
  and Internet
• - all types of bundled products exist
  (combination of flat rates and/or quantity
  related tariffs)
• - shift to higher data transmission standards in
  Internet use (quality change)
• - regular update of survey programme necessary

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Burden for companies

• - Specific questionnaires for companies according
  to their activities.
• - These questionnaires form a subset of the
  complete survey programme

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Calculation procedure

• Separate computation for the sectors
• - fixed line telephony/internet (no separation
  because of bundling) and
• - mobile telephony
• Company specific calculation (drastic changes of
  market share of market participants)

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Calculation procedure

• - Per company service output is divided into
  homogeneous subsets for which value and quantity
  data are available
• - indices per service output are calculated and
  aggregated at the level of the company
• - indices for companies are aggregated to
  sectoral indices
• - sectoral indices are aggregated to TC total

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Discussion ?!
                                  
Roemer Peter, Destatis Germany Telefone 49 (0)
611 75-2332 E-Mail peter.roemer_at_destatis.de