Bezeq Israel Telecom reported a 14% rise in quarterly profit on Wednesday, driven by its rapid fibre-optics broadband network deployment, and said it was set to launch much higher Internet speeds next year.<\/p>\n
Bezeq, Israel’s largest telecoms group, said it earned 354 million shekels ($95 million) excluding one-time items in the second quarter, versus 310 million a year earlier.<\/p>\n
“Fibre has been a key growth engine,” said Chairman Gil Sharon.<\/p>\n
Revenue rose 3.3% to 2.3 billion shekels, with revenue in its core fixed line business reaching 1.1 billion shekels to its highest level since 2012.<\/p>\n
Bezeq’s shares rose 3% in morning trading in Tel Aviv.<\/p>\n
Broadband internet revenue rose 9.5% as it reached 289,000 retail fibre customers at the end of June. It has 457,000 fibre customers including wholesale, while its network reaches some 2 million households.<\/p>\n
“We are preparing for the AI revolution which will require huge bandwidths and strong network capabilities,” CEO Ran Guron said, adding Bezeq was “building capabilities to deliver ultra-fast multi-gig rates.”<\/p>\n
Guron told a news conference that Bezeq would offer speeds of 10 gibabits (Gbps) per second, up from 2.5 Gbps currently, in the first half of 2024 and to 20-25 Gbps three to four years after that.<\/p>\n
Bezeq is still working with Israel’s telecoms regulators on getting approval to merge its fixed line business with its mobile phone and satellite TV units, Sharon said.<\/p>\n
“This regulation of 30 years old is obsolete. It has to change,” he said, noting the Communications Ministry intends to reexamine this policy later in 2023 or early next year.<\/p>\n
Mobile phone unit Pelephone recorded a 2% drop in quarterly adjusted net profit to 44 million shekels, while revenue also slipped 2%. Pelephone’s subscriber base slipped over the past year to 2.59 million.<\/p>\n
Bezeq said it will pay a dividend of 392 million shekels, or 0.14 shekel per share, on Oct. 11.<\/p>\n
The company last month raised its 2023 net profit estimate to 1.32 billion shekels from a prior 1.2 billion, citing lower than expected depreciation and financing expenses.<\/p>\n
It maintained a forecast of 3.8 billion for 2023 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) and 1.75 billion shekels for capital expenses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bezeq Israel Telecom reported a 14% rise in quarterly profit on Wednesday, driven by its rapid fibre-optics broadband network deployment, and said it was set to launch much higher Internet speeds next year. Bezeq, Israel’s largest telecoms group, said it earned 354 million shekels ($95 million) excluding one-time items in the second quarter, versus 310 million a year earlier. “Fibre has been a key growth engine,” said Chairman Gil Sharon. Revenue rose 3.3% to 2.3 billion shekels, with revenue in its core fixed line business reaching 1.1 billion shekels to its highest level since 2012. Bezeq’s shares rose 3% in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-800407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-telecom"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800407\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}