The EU Parliament is pushing for much steeper reductions in roaming fees than those proposed last year by European Commissioner Neelie Kroes. According to a draft proposal seen by Reuters, the parliament is aiming for a rate of EUR 0.15 per minute, compared with Kroes's plan for a one-third cut to EUR 0.24. Mobile data would be capped at EUR 0.20 per MB, rather than EUR 0.50 under the European Commission's proposal. Angelika Niebler, a German politician steering the proposed regulation through parliament, said mobile operators should not charge customers differently depending on where they are. "There should really be no roaming (fees) at a time when we are supposed to have a single market," Niebler said in an interview. The two sides are set to debate the measures in the coming months with the aim of arriving at a compromise law that would be phased in over three years. Under the parliament's proposal, the caps proposed by Kroes would come into force in July 2012, with its steeper cuts implemented in 2013 and 2014. Niebler's draft proposal would lower the cost of incoming calls to 5 cents per minute by 2014, half the rate proposed by Kroes, and c­ut the price of a text message by 50 percent to EUR 0.05. The current caps are EUR 0.35 per minute for outgoing calls and EUR 0.11 for incoming calls.

Source: Telecom Paper.

Tariffs for mobile broadband on laptops, netbooks and tablets have fallen slightly in the past half year in most Western European countries, according to the latest research from Telecompaper. The average monthly cost was down in ten out of the 16 countries surveyed, although prices vary significantly still across countries. The Netherlands has moved from the most expensive in Q1 2009 to seventh place in Q4 2011. Mobile broadband prices for laptops and tablets were still the lowest in Finland, the UK and Ireland, based on the average monthly rate, while Switzerland, France and Spain remain the most expensive. In the past, unlimited, affordable subscriptions were the norm in order to stimulate use of mobile data. Today the majority of operators have switched to tiered pricing, with data allowances and speed reductions after using a certain volume of data. The huge growth in mobile broadband use, both on phones and other devices, is driving­ operators to develop new pricing models, in order to support further development of their networks. This means that consumers can expect to continue to pay more for data used.

Source: Telecom Paper.

For many people today it seems difficult to live without the internet, however a decreasing, but still non-negligible, part of the EU population has never used it. In the 27 EU Member States, almost three quarters of households had access to the internet in the first quarter of 2011, compared with almost half in the first quarter of 2006. The share of households with broadband internet connections more than doubled between 2006 and 2011, to reach 68% in 2011 compared with 30% in 2006. During the same period, the share of individuals aged 16-74 in the EU27 who had never used the internet decreased from 42% to 24%.

Source: Europe's Information Society.

In 2010, there were yet 660 centers without Internet access. All other centers, that is, 88.8 per cent out of a total 6 608 Spanish libraries were already connected to the Internet, according to the report “Estadisticas de Bibliotecas 2010” published by the Instituto Nacional de Estadisticas (INE).

In 2000, four out of ten Spanish libraries had Internet access, which means that the figure has doubled in the last ten years. The number of centers with a website remains however much lower: in 2010, 34.9 per cent of Spanish libraries had a website. Their electronic addresses received 343.23 million visits, which corresponds to a 8.8 per cent increase to the previous figure from 2008.

Source: El Pais.

Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda, welcomed figures just released which show a solid increase in the availability of both mobile internet and basic quality fixed broadband lines. At the same time the Commissioner warned that Europe risked missing out on badly needed economic growth if it does not step up a gear and increase the capacity of its broadband networks. Studies show that a 10 percentage point increase in broadband take-up boosts annual GDP growth by 1 to 1.5%.

Broadband is getting faster in Europe, but very high speed connections are not yet widely available. Although 42.2 % of fixed broadband lines were at least 10 megabits per second (Mbps) in July 2011 (up from 29.2% a year ago), only 6.5 % were at least as fast as 30 Mbps and less than 1% at least 100 Mbps. The EU is not yet delivering on the 2020 high-speed targets of the Digital Agenda for Europe (see IP/10/581, MEMO/10/199 and MEMO/10/200).

Fixed broadband growing, but slowing: there were 27.2 fixed broadband lines per 100 citizens in July 2011, but take-up slowed, and grew by only 5.8 % in the last twelve months. Highest take-up was in the Netherlands (39.3 %), Denmark (38.5 %), France (33.9 %) and Germany (32.7 %), with Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Slovakia and Latvia still below 20%. At the end of 2011 one third of households in the EU did not have a broadband subscription (according to Eurostat's latest figures). .

Mobile broadband, fastest growing: up by 25.4 %, mobile broadband subscriptions (dedicated devices, USB keys and modems), are the fastest growing element of the broadband market. Including smart phone users, mobile broadband take-up reached 34.6 % in July 2011, up from 22.3 % twelve months earlier.

EU lagging behind competitors on ultra-fast internet: in the EU only 6.5 % of fixed broadband connections offer at least 30 Mbps, and 0.9 % at least 100 Mbps. These shares are doubled in the US, and in Korea and Japan all connections are already faster than 30 Mbps.

Best prices? Consumers in France and Sweden are among those who could benefit from the best deals for very high speed broadband, in terms of advertised maximum speeds in bundled packages. Broadband prices were on average cheapest in Latvia, Lithuania and Romania for most broadband connection speeds.

Source: European Commission

­The European Commission has written to sixteen Member States which have failed to fully implement new EU telecoms rules into national law, six months after the deadline to do so.

The new rules give EU customers new rights regarding fixed telephony, mobile services and Internet access. For instance, the right to switch telecoms operators in one day without changing their phone number and the right to clarity about data traffic management practices employed by Internet Service Providers. There is now also better protection of privacy and personal data online.

The Commission's requests today take the form of "reasoned opinions." Member States which do not fully implement the new laws risk referral to the EU's Court of Justice and potential financial penalties. The 16 Member States are: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia and Spain.

Source: Cellular News

The European Commission has proposed to spend almost €9.2 billion from 2014 to 2020 on pan-European projects to give EU citizens and businesses access to high-speed broadband networks and the services that run on them. The funding, part of the proposed Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), would take the form of both equity and debt instruments and grants. It would complement private investment and public money at local, regional and national level and EU structural or cohesion funds. At least €7 billion would be available for investment in high-speed broadband infrastructure.

The Commission considers that this money could leverage a total of between €50 and 100 billion of public and private investment – i.e. a substantial proportion of the estimated €270 billion of broadband investment needed to meet Digital Agenda targets on broadband. The remaining CEF funding for digital infrastructure would support public interest digital service infrastructure such as electronic health records, electronic identification and electronic procurement. The proposed financial support is complemented by proposed new guidelines for trans-European telecommunications networks and services. These guidelines would establish new objectives, priorities, projects of common interest and criteria for identifying further projects of common interest.

Money for broadband infrastructure

In the case of broadband infrastructure, EU funding from the CEF would leverage other private and public money by giving projects credibility and lowering their risk profiles. The money would be largely in the form of equity, debt or guarantees. This would then attract capital market financing from investors; the Commission and international financial institutions such as the European Investment Bank would absorb part of the risk and improve projects' credit rating.

Projects are likely to be proposed by established telecoms operators as well as new players such as water, sewage, electricity utilities, cooperative investment projects or construction firms. Many projects are likely to involve several of these investors clubbing together. The Commission also expects public authorities to join projects as part of public-private partnerships.

Source: European Commission

­The European Commission has sent requests for information to twenty EU Member States which have not yet notified measures to implement in full new EU telecoms rules into national law. The deadline set by the European Parliament and the EU's Council of Ministers for implementing the new rules was 25th May 2011.

The requests for information take the form of letters of formal notice under EU infringement procedures.The new rules give businesses and consumers new rights regarding phones, mobile services and Internet access. These include the right for customers to switch telecoms operators in just one day without changing their phone number, the right to more clarity about the services customers are offered and better protection of personal data online.

However, while legislative processes are ongoing in all EU Member States and a majority of them have informed the Commission of some implementation measures, only seven Member States (Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Malta, Sweden and the UK) have notified the Commission that they have implemented the new rules in full.

The twenty other Member States (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain) are due to reply to the 'letters of formal notice' within two months. If they fail to reply or if it is not satisfied with the answer, the Commission can send the Member States concerned a formal request to implement the legislation (in the form of a 'reasoned opinion' under EU infringement procedures), and ultimately refer them to the Court of Justice of the European Union.

Source: Cellular News

­In a new report, Fitch Ratings says that although overall mobile service revenue growth in Europe remains under pressure (-1.4% in the 12 months to March 2011), there are significant regional differences.

In northern Europe, mobile service revenue growth turned positive in 2010 and the 12 months to March 2011, led by a strong performance in the UK and Germany. In these two countries, revenue growth from non-voice services has more than offset voice revenue declines.

In southern Europe, the trend in service revenue declines is getting worse at -5.4% in the 12 months to March 2011. The economic weakness in southern Europe is dampening demand for mobile data services and exacerbating the decline in voice revenue from regulatory and competitive pressures.

Fitch expects voice revenue in southern Europe will remain under pressure, as effective voice pricing, especially in Spain, is higher than in northern Europe. Downward pressure is expected to continue as mobile termination rates, which are higher in southern Europe, are forced down towards northern European levels by regulation. Over the medium term, mobile data might not provide as large a boost to mobile revenue growth as some operators expect. There is a risk that mobile data might be partly used as a substitute for voice and SMS services. Fitch believes that the risk will increase over time as voice over IP becomes more of a threat with technology improvements and instant messaging and social networks could start to replace SMS more widely, not just in the youth segment.

Source: Cellular News

­Despite EU mobile operators reducing roaming charges in line with maximum price caps introduced by EU rules, consumers still do not enjoy significantly lower tariffs according to a European Commission report published today. Whilst price transparency has improved, the report concludes competition on the EU's roaming market is not yet strong enough to provide better choice and even better rates to consumers.

Commission Vice President for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes said: "The cost of using mobile phones or devices when abroad in the EU has fallen continuously since the adoption of the first roaming rules. But three years since the rules came in most operators propose retail prices that hover around the maximum legal caps. More competition on the EU roaming market would provide better choice and even better rates to consumers."

Over 71 million Europeans use their mobile phones to access the internet in a typical week. Europeans spend almost an hour a day and 6.4 hours per week going online via their mobile, according to a study by the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA). Almost a quarter (24%) of 16-24 year olds and 21 percent of 25-34 year olds access mobile internet services, spending 7.2 and 6.6 hours on it respectively each week. The internet continues to prove a popular source of entertainment with one quarter of Europeans (25%) gaming or listening to the radio online (25%), and one third watching films, TV or video clips online (32%) at least once a month. Of the overall users of internet-enabled handsets, nearly 49 percent claim to receive video clips, websites or images on their mobile and 80 percent say that they pass on the content they receive. Additionally, over 71 percent of European internet users admit that they stay in touch with friends and relatives more as a result of the internet. Around 16 percent of them communicate using social media via their mobile, while 16 percent also use mobile IM services. The study also found that 36 percent of European use the internet while watching TV. Some 46 percent of European households own at least one laptop and 121 million or 52 percent of Europeans use wireless broadband connections.

According to the Mediascope Europe study from the EIAA, Poland tops the chart of markets that spend the most time on mobile internet with 10.3 hours spent online each week, followed by Italy (7.9 hours), Belgium and Portugal (7.7 hours), and Russia (7.1 hours). There are more mobile internet users in Turkey compared to those that access internet via their PC (21% versus 20%), which indicates that consumers will engage with new platforms if it makes the internet more accessible for their everyday lives.

Source: TelecomPaper

The European Commission has proposed extending broadband access to the entire EU by 2013 and providing the whole region with access to speeds of at least 30Mbps by 2020. The targets form part of its 'Digital Agenda for Europe'. The EC would also like to see 50 percent or more of European households taking internet at over 100Mbps. In order to realise the goals, the EU will continue to work on encouraging investments in broadband infrastructure and developing an efficient spectrum policy, as well as devoting structural funds to broadband expansion. The EC also wants to create a single market for online content and services, including multi-territorial licences for copyrighted material, a European stake in global internet governance and further digitisation of Europe's cultural heritage. Additional measures may include a reform of research and innovation funds in order to increase support for the ICT sector in key strategic fields, support high-growth SMEs and stimulate ICT innovation across all business sectors.

The EC also wants more work on promoting internet use and digital literacy among Europeans. The proposals are part of the much broader EU 2020 plan presented by the commission, which proposes a range of strategies to get the EU out of the economic crisis and back on a growth path. The EC asked the member states to ensdorse the plans at the spring European Council meeting.

Source: TelecomPaper

­A new report from Tariff Consultancy (TCL) says that voice and SMS roaming rates in Europe have halved between 2007 to 2010 due to an EU roaming price cap - but with very few prices applied below the cap. EU mobile roaming data rates are on average 5.4 euro, 5 times the 1 Euro per MB wholesale rate though individual operator data roaming rates vary from below the wholesale cap to more than 10 times the cap rate.

Increasingly though mobile operators push a series of separate "opt in" roaming bundles for consumers that bypass the EU roaming cap which offer roaming discounts in return for a weekly or monthly fee to selected holiday destinations but can attract higher rates to EU countries than the EC rate cap.The net effect of the rebalancing of mobile roaming tariffs outside of the EU has been to make roaming services to the US or other countries relatively expensive by comparison with the EU.

For example:

- The price of a roaming voice call from the EU zone to the next geographical tariff zone has an average mark up of 200%

- The price of SMS roaming outside the EU zone to the next geographical zone has an average mark up of 160%.

- The price of Mobile Data roaming outside the EU zone to the next geographical zone has an average mark up of 270%.

Source: Cellular News

New data from TeleGeography’s European VoIP & Triple Play Research Service reveal that voice over IP (VoIP) subscribers have grown from just over six million in 2005 to 34.6 million at year-end 2008. VoIP now accounts for more than 24% of fixed line telephone subscribers in Europe.

VoIP service revenues of EUR4.1 billion are still dwarfed by the nearly EUR36 billion generated by traditional switched fixed-line services. However, the impact of VoIP on the European fixed-line market is greater than its relatively modest subscriber and revenue share would suggest, due to the strong downward pressure VoIP-based competitors place on voice service prices.

Source: Telegeography

Hungary’s three incumbent mobile operators Pannon, T-Mobile and Vodafone shed 69,342 subscribers between them in March, taking the country’s mobile subscriber base to 12.11 million, reports the national regulator, the NHH. Active mobile subscriptions reached 10.80 million at the same date, down from 10.92 million in the month of February it said, while cellular penetration dipped from 121.4% in February to 120.8%. By the start of April, Pannon had 34.70% of the market, (up from 34.63% in February), ahead of second-placed T-Mobile with 44.15% (44.10%) and Vodafone in third with 21.15% (21.27%).

Source: TeleGeography.

The Malta Communication Authority has posted a report on telecoms market for the time period of July to December. According to the report the mobile sector of the country has experienced a swift growth during 2008. The Q4'08 saw coming of two new mobile operators, Bay Mobile and Redtouch fone, both of which operated on Vodafone�fs infrastructure.

Melita Mobile also installed its own mobile infrastructure thereby creating more infrastructure-based competition in the mobile sector later in 2009.

The mobile subscriber base reached 385,636 by 2008-end, up by 3.8%. The postpaid subscriber base attributed to 13.6% of the total mobile subscriber base whereas the prepaid segment held 86.37% of the total base.

The mobile penetration in the country reached 94% at the end of 2008, up by 4% since a year earlier. During the last 6 months of 2008, over 23,000 subscribers changed operator, compared with 22,325 in the same period of 2007.

The mobile originating traffic grew by 8.3% whereas SMS traffic dropped from 264.21 million SMS in H2'07 to 241.53 SMS in H2'08, driven by promotional offers featuring free minute bundles.

Source: Wireless Federation.

­The Italian market lost a total of 135k customers over the year, with net losses in Q2 and Q4 trumping the smaller net gains in the other two periods. The year closed with a total base of 88.58m, compared to 88.72m, while penetration dropped from 152.6% to 152.4%.

Broadband subscriptions in the UK exceeded expectations in the last 6 months of 2008 reaching 17.4 million by the end of the year and topping Point Topic’s forecasts by 0.2%.

“DSL operators had a stronger fourth quarter than projected, in particular the local loop unbundlers. While cable did well it didn’t exceed our forecasts,” says Tim Johnson, Chief Analyst at Point Topic.

The success of O2 was the biggest new story of 2008 as far as the fixed broadband market was concerned. Starting the year with only 71,000 broadband lines, it added 270,000 more to increase its market share by 1.5%. Sky has a good 12 months too and built on its accomplishments in previous years to achieve even bigger gains, adding 727,000 lines to reach almost 2 million lines

These successes have contributed to DSL increasing its share, from 78.0% to 78.6% of the UK broadband market with almost all the balance being provided by cable and only an estimated 0.2% using other technologies such as fixed wireless and satellite.

However during the year there was only a 10.6% growth in broadband overall, a sharp decline from the 19.9% in 2007. Much of the slowdown came in the second half of the year when market saturation combined with the advancing recession to cut the number of adds from almost 1 million in the first half to only 675,000 in the second.

­The UK added over 3m new mobile connections during 2008, to take the total base to 75.75m, equivalent to 124% penetration. The market is one of the most competitive in Europe, if not the world, with five established MNOs and several MVNOs, of which the most successful are Virgin and the increasingly ambitious Tesco.

The European Parliament has approved new price caps for mobile network roaming within the EU, including voice, data/internet and SMS texting. From 1 July 2009 the cost of sending an SMS whilst abroad is capped at EUR0.11, whilst from that date wholesale data roaming charges are capped at EUR1 per MB (which will drop to EUR0.80 in July 2010 and EUR0.50 in July 2011). Maximum per-minute voice call roaming charges will also fall: to EUR0.43 for outgoing and EUR0.19 for incoming calls whilst abroad on 1 July 2009; to EUR0.39 and EUR0.15 respectively in July 2010; and to EUR0.35 and EUR0.11 respectively in July 2011 (compared to current roaming caps of EUR0.46/EUR0.22 on calls made/received). All prices exclude VAT. Other measures approved include compulsory per-second billing for the entire duration of calls received whilst abroad, and after the first 30 seconds for outgoing calls.

Source: TeleGeography.

Hungary mobile operators, Pannon, T-Mobile and Vodafone have ended March with 541,866 mobile internet subscribers, up from 526,775 in February, according to market regulator NHH. Mobile subscribers sent some 840,367 GB of data in March, up from 769,427 GB in February, while average traffic per subscriber also increased to 1.83 GB. T-Mobile holds 51.68% mobile data subscribers, whereas Pannon and Vodafone recorded market shares of 24.58% and 23.74%, respectively. Considering the volume of traffic, T-mobile market share stood at 42.07%, Vodafone’s share reported as 36.18% and Panaon holds 21.75% market. According to the satistcs, in March, the largest volume of data was transferred by Vodafone subscribers (304,000 GB), while T-Mobile’s subscribers reached a total volume of 280,000 GB, and Pannon’s subscribers transmitted 183,000 GB.

Source: Wireless Federation.

Some 200 remote farms in the Northern Icelandic region of Skagafjordur now have broadband internet access following the deployment of a MESH network from US based Firetide.

Gagnaveita Skagafjardar, which translates to “Data Municipal Service of Skagafjordur,” was formed in 2006 with a mission to deliver a fiber connection to every home in the nearby town of Saudarkrokur. The organization, however, soon recognized the need for delivering high-speed connections to the many farming communities outside of town. Too far away from any major urban communications center to get a high-speed connection through telephone lines, these rural businesses have, until now, been restricted to expensive 128 Kbps ISDN.

CMT, the Spanish telecoms regulator, has lowered the mobile termination fee to a common price of EUR 0.07 per  minute for Telefonica Moviles Spain (Movistar), Vodafone Spain and Orange Spain effective from 16 April. The same price is also applicable to MVNOs using the networks of these operators. CMT’s ruling, for the recent entrant Yoigo is that it will stick to its current mobile termination fees of EUR 0.10, as it started operations when the Spanish mobile market had already matured. The mobile termination fees quoted by CMT will be valid until 16 October, after which the fees is likely to fall further.

Source: Wireless Federation.

According to a recent survey it is seen that nearly 52% of the French mobile subscribers own a handset that is capable of connecting to the internet. However, nearly 45% of the mobile phone subscribers had a mobile internet subscription and 20.5% were online with their handset at least once a week. 48% of the total surveyed said that they have upgraded their handsets in past 1 year, 36% of these have chosen 3G and 3G+ multimedia touch screen handsets. The sites which were most visited were operator portals, which accounted for 15.1 percent of visits, followed by search engines (14.2%), practical sites (13.9%), information sites (9.8%), entertainment sites (9.1%), and specialised news sites (8.7%). Nearly 21% of mobile internet subscribers said that they have visited a social networking site in the last six months, led by Facebook with 14.5% of connections. Only 8% of the total made a purchase from a mobile e-commerce site.

Source: Wireless Federation.

The total number of ultra-high speed broadband subscribers in France passed 170,000 at the end of 2008, out of 20,500 buildings connected via fibre to at least one telco’s infrastructure, according to a report from the regulator Arcep. Of the total, some 130,000 were connected to a hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) network, while a further 40,000 were using fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) technology. By the start of this year former monopoly France Telecom had deployed fibre in approximately 40 municipalities, Numericable had upgraded to fibre in around 30 major urban centres and SFR (including neuf Cegetel) and Iliad (Free) are concentrating efforts in areas where FT is less active. Arcep estimates that between three million and 4.5 million homes were passed by fibre at the end of last year.

Source: TeleGeography.

Reuters is reporting that the British telecoms regulator Ofcom has ruled that mobile termination rates (MTRs) will be reduced by up to 21% in real terms as of today. Under the new ruling announced yesterday both Vodafone and O2 will cut their average mobile termination rates to GBP0.0471 (USD0.0687) per minute, a cut of 8.4% adjusted for inflation. Meanwhile Orange will cut its rates to GBP0.0484 per minute, an 11.1% cut. Hutchison Whampoa-owned 3 will see the largest percentage drop in its MTR, with Ofcom calling for a 20.9% drop to GBP0.0583 per minute. The ruling comes as part of as part of the regulator’s implementation of price controls for the next two years; Ofcom aims to have MTRs equalised for all mobile operators by the end of March 2011, and a further reduction in the rates is expected next year.

Source: TeleGeography.

Germany’s telecoms regulator, the Federal Network Agency (FNA), has cut the price that incumbent telco Deutsche Telekom (DT) can charge rivals for using its lines connecting homes and businesses to the local telephone exchange, known as the ‘last-mile’. According to Reuters, the regulator has lowered the price, which is reviewed every two years, by 2.9% from EUR10.50 (USD13.94) to EUR10.20. DT has criticised the ruling, stating that it has left it no foundation to invest in the expansion of its services to rural areas, and arguing ‘urgently needed funds for investments in broadband expansion will be abolished.’ The incumbent had wanted to increase the access price for its eight million connections to its local loop to EUR12.90. The new fee will expire on 31 March 2011.

The FNA has also set new mobile terminations fees - the rate that operators charge for calls made to their networks from those of rivals. The new rates are EUR0.0659 per minute for Vodafone and T-Mobile networks and EUR0.0714 per minute for E-Plus and O2, down 16% and 19% respectively. According to TeleGeography’s CommsUpdate, T-Mobile, Vodafone and O2 put forward a suggestion in January 2009 to increase the mobile termination fees, while E-Plus was the only operator to propose a reduction. The new rates are valid until 30 November 2010.

Source: TeleGeography.

The three Hungarian mobile operators Pannon, T-Mobile and Vodafone had 526,775 mobile internet subscribers at the end of February, up from 508,000 in January, according to market regulator NHH. Mobile users sent some 769,427 GB of data in February, up from 761,000 GB in January, while average traffic per subscriber also increased to 1.77 GB. T-Mobile’s share of mobile data subscribers stood at 51.96% at the end of February, while Pannon and Vodafone recorded market shares of 24.52% and 23.52%, respectively. Based on the volume of traffic, T-Mobile’s market share was 42.83%, Vodafone’s share equaled 35.14% and Pannon had 22.03% of the market. Accordingly, in February the largest volume of data was transferred by the customers of T-Mobile (274,000 GB), while Vodafone’s customers reached a total volume of 270,000 GB, and Pannon’s customers transmitted 170,000 GB. In February, traffic per subscriber, calculated on the basis of subscriptions involved in data transfer, totaled 2.71 GB in Vodafone’s network, 1.59 GB at Pannon and 1.44 GB at T-Mobile.

Source: Wireless Federation.

Cosmote, the Romanian incumbent has crossed the mark of 6 million subscribers. In past one and a half year, the Romanian operator has nearly doubled its subscriber base and added 2.2 million subscribers in 2008. Cosmote currently holds 48% market share in Romania. In 2009, the operator intends to stick its focus on the enhancement of its service offering and expansion of its subscriber base.

Source: Wireless Federation.

According to Limun.hr, Bosnia’s Communications Regulatory Agency (CRA) has issued 3G licences to the country’s three major cellcos. BH Telecom, Telekom Srpske and HT Mostar have all been awarded seven-year licences, and each operator will pay EUR15 million (USD19.9 million) for their concession after a two-year grace period. Kemal Huseinovic, the CRA’s director, claimed that the issuance of the new licences will help improve the range of services, whilst reducing prices and encouraging competition. Commercial 3G services are now expected to be launched by the end of 2009.

Source: TeleGeography.

­Figures from the European Commission show that the EU's telecoms sector (worth about 3% of EU GDP) continued to grow in 2008 with revenues estimated at above €300 billion (US$409 billion) - up 1.3% compared to 2007 and outperforming the rest of the economy (up by 1% only).

Europe also leads the world in mobile phone services with the number of subscriptions in 2008 at 119% of the EU population (up 7 percentage points from 2007), well ahead of the US (87%) and Japan (84%).

Source: Cellular News.

The number of active broadband connections in Ireland (fixed and mobile) passed the 1.2 million mark at the end of 2008, up 35% year-on-year, according to data published by the national telecoms regulator ComReg. Excluding mobile broadband subscriptions however, the figure for xDSL, cable-based and other (WiMAX etc) lines was 891,000. The regulator said that broadband per capita penetration reached 27.1% at the end of the year, with DSL subscriptions accounting for 45.9% of all internet subscriptions. During the fourth quarter, the number of dial-up internet subscribers fell to just 237,475, down 27% y-o-y; total internet subscriptions stood at 1.4 million, 18.5% higher than a year earlier.

ComReg’s quarterly report notes that cellular penetration in the Republic stood at 121% by 31 December 2008, as the total number of mobile subscriptions passed 5.3 million. Vodafone remains the leading player, with a 41.1% market share, followed by O2 with 37.9%, Meteor Mobile with 18.2% and 3 Ireland with just 2.8%. ComReg reported that the total number of text messages sent in the three months to 31 December reached over 2.8 billion, up from 2.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2007. In addition it noted that approximately 1.487 million people have switched mobile provider since the launch of Mobile Number Portability (MNP) in June 2003.

Source: TeleGeography.

Source: TeleGeography.

According to Reuters, the European Commission (EC) has given Danish telecoms regulator, the National IT and Telecom Agency, backing to force operator Fixnet Nordic (formerly TDC) to open up its cable broadband network. European Union (EU) Telecoms Commissioner, Viviane Reding, said: ‘I entirely share the Danish telecoms regulator's concern that in the absence of cable regulation in Denmark, alternative operators might be hindered in their ability to offer high capacity internet services to their customers.’ Under the plans, Fixnet Nordic will have to grant its competitors wholesale access to the network, allowing rivals to compete in the broadband market, which is currently dominated by the incumbent. According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms database, Fixnet Nordic had a total of 1.17 million broadband subscribers at the end of 2008, representing a market share of 71.06%, while rivals Cybercity and Telia Denmark had 17.78% and 11.17% respectively.

Source: TeleGeography.

Moldova’s National Regulatory Agency for Telecommunications (ANRTI) has reported that the number of broadband subscribers more than doubled in 2008, surpassing the number of dial-up customers for the first time. The number of broadband connections increased by 140% from 47,200 in 2007 to 115,120 a year later, while dial-up subscribers decreased by 35% from 63,000 to 40,600. The report indicates that broadband services are mainly concentrated in Chisinau; two thirds of the country’s total subscribers are located in the capital, representing a localised broadband penetration rate of 30.8%, compared to between 2.25% and 4.7% in the country’s remaining districts.

Meanwhile, the number of fixed lines in service increased by 3.2% to 1.114 million during the year, representing the lowest increase in the last ten years. Moldtelecom, the country’s main provider of fixed line services, connected 31,390 subscribers to its networks, increasing its total to 1.088 million customers at the end of 2008, while alternative operators grew their customers to 26,300 by year-end.

Source: TeleGeography.

A report from the Moldovan telecoms regulator, Anrceti has said that in 2008, the number of fixed subscribers increased, compared to 2007, by 346,900 or by 3.2%, coming up 1.114 million. This is the lowest rate of increase in the recent years.

The fixed telephony also gave in terms of sales. The turnover registered by fixed telephone service providers declined in 2008 by 5.85% and equaled to two billion 208 million lei, whereas the Average Revenue per Subscriber (ARPU) decreased by 9.97%, showing 167,8 lei. The decline was mainly the result of the decrease of several types of fixed traffic: local, long-distance and interconnection. But on the other hand, all types of mobile traffic increased considerably, bringing along a 22% increase over 2007 in the total of sales, coming up to two billion 914,7 million lei.

Source: Cellular News.

ADSL subscriptions in France rose by around 560,000 in the fourth quarter of 2008 to reach 16.83 million at the end of the year, according to provisional figures from regulator Arcep. There were 14.81 million ADSL subscriptions at the end of 2007. The data takes into account residential and business subscriptions in metropolitan France and overseas departements. The overall number of broadband internet subscriptions rose to 17.73 million at the end of 2008, up from 17.16 million at the end of September 2008 and 14.81 million at the end of December 2007. France Telecom had sold 8.53 million access to alternative operators on the wholesale market as of end-2008. These included 6.33 million unbundled accesses (up by 324,000 in the quarter), 2.1 million bitstream accesses (down by 18,000) and 94,000 national IP accesses (down by 4,000).

Source: TelecomPaper.

Key findings from Broadband Scorecard Sep 2008  

• EU broadband penetration rose to 110.5m Sep 2008 or 22.4% of the population. This represented an increase of 9% 6 months and 20% over the previous year.  
• The highest penetration rates were recorded in Denmark (37.5%) and Netherlands (36.3%) followed by Sweden, Finland and the UK. All of these countries recorded competition from both cable networks and regulated access.  
• The lowest penetration rates at just above 10% were recorded in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia.  
• The highest growth rates over the full year were seen in Greece, Cyprus and Malta. Additional competitive impetus from local loop unbundling was particularly pronounced in Greece and Cyprus.
• Growth rates began to slow in several of the leading countries including Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands and the UK suggesting market maturity. Some countries with lower absolute take-up levels also experienced slow growth including Spain, Italy and Austria.
• Fibre penetration was 0.3% on average across Europe. However some countries had significantly higher fibre penetration including Sweden (5.6% population) and Estonia (4.9%) and Lithuania (4.2%).  
• Incumbents retained 50% of the total retail broadband market (including resale) or 45% if resale is excluded.  
• The source of most competition in the EU is unbundling of the local loop (44% of all lines supplied by competitors) followed by cable and other parallel infrastructures (36%) with resale and ‘bitstream’ access accounting for the remainder.

Source: ECTA.

Orange UK and Barclaycard introduce a new mobile payment system which is claimed to be the biggest evolution in terms of payment after the introduction of plastic cards, 40 years ago.

This new system will enable the customers to make payments through their handsets at the retailers by waving their handset against a reader. The two firms intend to widen their service to ticketing, transport and rewards.

Source: Wireless Federation.

At the end of January, the three Hungarian mobile operators had 508,000 mobile internet subscribers and there were 424,000 SIM cards active in data transmission over the past three months, the first mobile internet flash report published by the National Communications Authority of Hungary (NHH) has revealed.

According to the report, at the end of December, when Pannon, T-Mobile and Vodafone had 12.224 million subscribers in all, the number of those also with mobile internet subscription totalled 494,000. The number of ADSL, cable modem and mobile internet subscriptions in Hungary together exceeded 2 million at the end of 2008. Users transmitted some 761,000 Gbytes of data in January following the data traffic of 651,000 Gbytes in December, while average traffic per subscriber also increased.

Source: Cellular News.

The Czech Republic was home to a total of 13.57 million mobile phone users at the end of December last year, according to operator data as quoted by the Prague Daily Monitor. The country’s three incumbent cellcos – Telefonica O2 CR, T-Mobile and Vodafone and Vodafone – collectively added more than half a million net new additions, raising the cellular penetration rate to 131%. Of the three, Vodafone registered the largest single gain, adding a net 230,000 new users for a total of 2.89 million, while market leader T-Mobile posted a net gain of 150,000 to close the year with 5.42 million customers. Meanwhile, the country’s second largest operator Telefonica O2 CR accrued an additional 140,000 net new customers for a total of 5.26 million.

Market saturation and fierce sector competition has resulted in a drop in blended monthly average revenue per user (ARPU), prompting cellcos to focus their efforts on launching new services to squeeze additional revenues from existing users. Vodafone again topped the revenue table with ARPU of CZK583 (USD26.42) per month in 2008, ahead of Telefonica with CZK519 and T-Mobile’s CZK500.

Source: TeleGeography.

Moldova's National Regulatory Agency for Telecommunications (ANRTI) has reported that the country’s wireless market revenues increased by 22.6% to MDL2.915 billion (USD275.7 million) in 2008 compared to the year earlier. Orange Moldova posted the largest revenue of USD186.8 million, while the income of rivals Moldcell, Unite and Eventis reached USD71.8 million, USD12.9 million, and USD1.1 million respectively. According to the agency, total investment in the sector amounted to USD114.5 million in 2008, a 5.7% rise compared to the previous year. ANRTI attributed the rise in revenues to considerable growth in the number of wireless subscribers, especially within the 3G services segment. The total number of cellular subscribers grew 28.7% to 2.42 million in 2008, including 188,400 3G users. Wireless penetration per 100 residents increased from 55% in 2007 to 67.9% in 2008. The regulator did not release subscriber results for individual operators.

Source: TeleGeography.

German incumbent Deutsche Telekom (DT) has announced it will open up its VDSL network to competitors and start selling a wholesale service for VDSL double-play packages with speeds of up to 50Mbps. During a press conference at the CeBIT trade show in Hanover, Timotheus Hottges, the company’s board member for Sales & Service, stressed that DT’s decision is voluntary and without pressure from the regulator, the Federal Network Agency (FNA). The company said it is looking for its competitors to invest more in building out broadband infrastructure in Germany. DT plans to charge EUR30 (USD38) per line, but says that as market penetration grows, the wholesale price will fall.

Source: TeleGeography.

UK watchdog Ofcom has announced that providers of wholesale ‘super-fast’ broadband services, principally BT, will be free to set prices without any regulatory intervention. The regulator says that the move will promote investment of next generation fibre-optic broadband networks. BT has welcomed the decision. ‘Today's announcement gives us the green light to push ahead with our GBP1.5 billion [USD2.1 billion] super-fast broadband investment plans to reach at least 40% of UK households by 2012,’ said CEO Ian Livingston in a statement.

Source: TeleGeography.

With 18.1 million units sold in 2008, demand for Portable Navigation Devices (PNDs) increased by 3 million units compared to 2007; a 20 percent rise. In quarter 4 the economic crisis took its toll on the market. The industry defied falling prices through a variety of innovations.

Never before have so many Portable Navigation Devices been sold in Europe as in 2008. With 18.1 million units purchased, 2008 volumes surpassed those of 2007 by 3 million, or 20 percent. Germany led the way as the most important market in Europe, with 4.375 million PNDs sold – a growth rate of 22 percent compared to 2007. Sales in Eastern Europe increased by 600 thousand to reach 1.5 million, compared to 16.6 million in Western Europe (up from 14.5 million the previous year) – a growth rate of 15 percent.

Source: Cellular News.

The mobile subscriber base in Slovenia has surpassed the population of the country, reports the Agency for Post and Electronic Communications. According to the Slovenian Watchdog, the mobile penetration in the country has reached 100.1% in Q4'08, rising by 4.9% from 2007.

Mobitel, country's largest mobile operator, lead the market with 58.9% of the market share, followed by Simobil which stood at 27.8% and Tusmobil at 5.8%.

Nearly 85,075 of mobile phoner numbers were ported in 2008, escalating by 30% since 2007.

Source: Wireless Federation.

Three consecutive quarters of negative growth have led the Western European mobile phone market into recession. According to IDC's European Mobile Phone Tracker, vendors shipped 53.6 million units in 4Q08, 13.5% lower than the 62 million units shipped in 4Q07. For the full year 2008, vendors shipped 190.5 million units in Western Europe, 5.9% lower than the 202.5 million units shipped in 2007.

"The fourth quarter was the worst quarter ever experienced by phone makers, and a storm of factors led to this," said Francisco Jeronimo, research manager with IDC's European Mobile Devices and Trends service. "A combination of weak end-user demand, currency volatility, and limited credit availability prevented the market from experiencing the usual seasonal increase in shipments. The traditional holiday campaigns and new product launches were not enough to boost sales in comparison with previous years and almost all vendors experienced a significant slump in sales. We expect the first half of 2009 to be very challenging as vendors and distributors grapple with clearing inventory. Should these conditions persist, the mobile phone market may not recover until the middle of 2010."

If there was one highlight in 4Q08 it was that the converged mobile devices segment (commonly referred to as smartphones) grew 25.9% over 4Q07, clearly outpacing the rest of the industry. For full year 2008, converged mobile devices saw growth of 36.1%, representing 17.4% of the total market. Despite the good performance, converged mobile device growth was still not strong enough to support the entire sector.

Source: Cellular News.

Euro­pean low-cost airline, Ryanair has launched an in-flight mobile phone service initially onboard 20 of its, mainly Ireland based aircraft. This is the first step in fitting Ryanair’s entire fleet of over 170 aircraft to allow all passengers to make and receive mobile calls and texts on all Ryanair flights.

Passengers on Ryanair’s 20 OnAir enabled aircraft can now make and receive roaming voice calls at between €2-€3 per minute - which is considerably higher than the recommended levels from the European Commission.

Source: Cellular News.

Voice over IP telephony services are reshaping the fixed-line telecom market in Europe. By mid-year 2008, just under 30 million consumer VoIP lines were in service in Western Europe, up from 20 million only a year earlier. While the aggregate pace of growth across Europe remains rapid, trends vary dramatically by country.

• Market penetration at at mid-year 2008 ranged from slightly less than 50% of households in France to less than 3% in Spain.
• Growth rates ranged from an anemic 13% in Norway to 544% in Portugal.
• Incumbents lead the VoIP market in France, Italy, the U.K., the Netherlands and Norway, but competitive operators hold the lead in most other markets.
• Prices of triple-play bundles of broadband, VoIP, and video services range from €30 to more than €80 per month.

VoIP Penetration of Households, Q2 2007 & Q2 2008

TeleGeography’s European VoIP & Triple Play Research Service brings clarity to the state of this dynamic market. Contents include:

• VoIP subscriber, revenue and traffic data by country from 2004 to 2008.
• Subscriber and revenue projections by country through 2012.
• Rankings of Europe’s leading VoIP service providers.
• Detailed analysis of the VoIP markets in 13 European nations.
• Profiles of 72 leading consumer VoIP providers.
• Broadband and VoIP pricing summaries in 13 European nations.

All data are updated twice annually, and are current through mid-year 2008. Bi-annual updates, delivered in PDF and Excel spreadsheets, include country subscriber totals, provider rankings, VoIP projections by country and baseline market indicators by country.

Source: TeleGeography.

Greece’s National Telecommunications & Post Commission (EETT) has announced that the number of local loop unbundling (LLU) DSL broadband/voice lines in service grew by 136% in 2008 to 646,000 at the end of December, whilst the overall number of broadband connections was up by 48% to over 1.5 million. The regulator calculates that broadband penetration in Greece stands at 13.4%.

Source: TeleGeography.

The German federal government has published plans to ensure all German households have broadband access by the end of 2010. Phase one of the government’s broadband strategy involves the encouragement of operators to deploy wireless and mobile broadband services in rural areas currently without broadband coverage via DSL or cable. According to the report, around 730,000 households in 600 regions currently connect to the internet via satellite. The second phase is to ensure that 75% of German households have access to a broadband connection of at least 50Mbps by 2014. In order to achieve this, the government will aim to speed up digital dividend auctions, push operators to seek synergy via joint infrastructure deployments, ensure growth and innovation-oriented regulation, and provide operators with the necessary financial support. Within the next few months the government plans to open up all existing networks from federal, state, and local governments for third parties to use and will auction digital dividend frequencies in the 790-862MHz region. Wilhelm Scheer, president of German ICT industry organisation Bitkom, said the strategy will stimulate investments of up to EUR50 billion (USD62.91 billion), and should create around 250,000 jobs.

Source: TeleGeography.

Bosnia and Herzegovina has a subscriber base of 3.842 million, at the end of 2008. Mobile Telephony penetration rate has reached 86%.

Operators    

BH Telecom: 1.4Mn subscribers
M:tel: 1.1.Mn subscribers
Eronet: 660,000 subscribers

Source: Wireless Federation.

Spain has reportedly added 276,352 mobile subscribers in the Spanish mobile market, taking the subscriber base to a total of 50.89 million, a hike of 3.7% since last year. According to CMT, the Spanish regulator, Yoigo took over 44.3% of the total net additions, while MVNOs took 29.6% of the total net additions, Vodafone got 18.5% of net adds to its kitty whereas Orange accounted for 7.4% and Movistar 0.2%.

Mobile penetration in the country reached 112.6% rising from 108.6% in December’07.The M2M sector has gone up by 32.3% since 2007, to 1.47 million lines. The growth of the M2M sector brings the total number of mobile lines to 52.36 million.

Nearly 378,302 mobile numbers were ported in December’08, a rise of 9.6% in comparison to 2007. Yoigo, Orange and the MVNOs saw a postive rise in portability, while Vodafone and Movistar saw a negative downfall. Yoigo won 24,765 users, the MVNOs attracted 19,927, and Orange added 106,249 ported subscribers.

Source: Wireless Federation.

The National Authority for Communications (ANC) has issued a press release claiming that since number portability was introduced last October there has been a total of 31,514 ported numbers as of the begining of February. Over 26,000 of the total are mobile numbers, whereas 5,291 are fixed telephone numbers. The main fixed customer gains were seen by RCS&RDS (1,059), UPC (1,892) and Vodafone (1,479). Where mobile telephony is concerned, following porting, all five of the operators gained new subscribers: Cosmote gained 11,707, Vodafone 7,328, Orange 6,849, Telemobil 211 and RCS&RDS 128.

Porting is possible only within the same category of numbers (fixed-fixed, mobile-mobile). The service has been available in Romania since 21 October 2008. The ceiling of ported numbers per day was gradually extended, as required by the number of porting requests, and at present each operator can port 500 numbers a day.

Source: TeleGeography.

According to data published this week by the French telecoms regulator Arcep, there were 58.073 million registered SIMs in the country as at 31 December 2008, a penetration rate of 91.3%, up from 87.6% a year earlier. Of the total, 2.896 million were signed up to one of the country’s MVNOs, equivalent to a market share of 5.19%. In overseas markets (DOM), Arcep said that Saint-Martin, Saint-Barthelemy, Mayotte, Saint Pierre et Miquelon reported a total of 2.281 million customers at the same date, up from 2.088 million at 31 December 2007.

Source: TeleGeography.

The Hungarian incumbents Pannon, Vodafone and T-Mobile have together added 284,000 new subscribers in December, the total reaching to 12.24 million at the end of 2008, reports Hungarian telecom regulator NHH. Pannon experienced a fall in its market share from 35.18% at November’08-end to 35.09% at December’08-end followed by T-Mobile from 43.94% to 43.86%. On the other hand, Vodafone’s market share rose to 21.04% at December’08 from 20.89% in November. The number of active subscription grew to 10.97 million, up by 227,000 compared to November. Mobile penetration rose to 121.8% in December’08 compared to 119.15 in November.

Source: Wireless Federartion.

­The European Commission says that it is earmarking €1 billion (US$1.3 billion) to achieve 100 % high-speed internet coverage for all European citizens by 2010 as part of the European Economic Recovery Plan. On average, 93 % of Europeans can enjoy a high speed online connection but in some countries broadband covers less than half of the rural population.

­Hutchison 3G Ireland ('3') has won a contract from the Irish government to develop a national broadband network covering rural areas of the country. Ireland currently has over 1.2 million subscribers to broadband. The National Broadband Scheme will provide the remaining 10% of the population, or approximately 33% of the area of the country, with broadband services. Ireland will have 100% coverage by September 2010; half of the area under the scheme will be covered by the end of this year.

­Telekom Austria has reported that its mobile Communication customer base grew by 15.2% in 2008 from 15.4 million customers at the end of 2007 to 17.8 million customers at the end of 2008, with all mobile operations contributing to this subscriber growth.

mobilkom austria, recorded 140,500 net adds during the fourth quarter of 2008 compared to 105,600 during the same period of the previous year. mobilkom austria was able to expand its overall subscriber base by 13.6% to 4.5 million customers in 2008. The contract subscriber base increased by 19.0%. mobilkom austria was able to increase its market share from 40.3% at the end of 2007 to 42.4% at the end of 2008 recording the highest growth in market share in the history of the company. The mobile penetration rate in Austria stood at 126.6% at year-end 2008.

Source: Cellular News.

The MVNO phenomena is growing rapidly in the Netherlands as the number of subscribers signing upto one of the country’s 50 or so virtual providers has reached 3.51 million on 30 September 2008, up by 10% year-on-year. The MVNO’s now account for 17.3% of all SIM cards on the market at the given date, up from 17.0% a year earlier.

The MVNO market in Netherlands has seen entry of new players to the market in six months uptil Sept-2008 namely, Easer Mobile, Tok Toe Mie, Youfone and Internet Overal. In addition, more entrants have since launched commercially in the country or announced plans to launch in early 2009, such as Blyk and Telesur, the Dutch group said.

Source: Wireless Federation.

France Telecom (Orange) has announced the launch of a satellite-based internet access service in France, through its subsidiary NordNet. The launch will give the French operator 100% broadband coverage in mainland France, it said in its 12 January press release. Orange says the new service helps it meet its commitment to the government’s ‘France Digital 2012’ project, announced in October 2008, which hopes to provide broadband internet access to every French citizen, regardless of where they live in the country, for EUR35 (USD43) per month (including any equipment costs) by 2010.

Source: TeleGeography.

With the weakening of Belarusian Ruble the local mobile operators plan to raise their call tariffs. MTS Belarus, one of the leading mobile operator, has already raised its call and SMS tariffs by between 15 and 30 rubles and other operators could now follow the league. The rise in tariffs is driven by a sharp depreciation of the ruble earlier this month; MTS Belarus has to pay for a significant proportion of its new equipment and for many services in foreign currency – and is struggling to do so as the currency fluctuates.

Source: Wireless Federation.

According to a study by the Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority (FICORA) over 68% of households in the country now have access to broadband services, up from 59% a year earlier. The survey conducted by the regulator also noted that over 80% of users believe that they need a connection speed of at least 1Mbps. Uptake of mobile broadband has reportedly seen a significant increase over the twelve-month period, with 11% of broadband users taking a mobile broadband subscription compared to just 1% last year; the survey indicated that most mobile broadband users also have a fixed line broadband service.
Despite the increase in broadband uptake less than a third of households in the country had a fixed line voice connection. In contrast the survey reported that 98% of 15-79-year olds had access to a mobile phone. VoIP calls also registered an increase over the period, with 24% of internet users indicating that they had used the technology in 2008, up from 21% in 2007.

Source: TeleGeography.

­The UK mobile market saw annual growth drop 0.3pp year on year to 4.4%, the second lowest figure ever recorded. In real terms, annual net additions stood at 3.15m, down slightly on the 3.21m recorded in the prior twelve months. Quarterly net additions totalled 0.97m, taking the total connection base to 74.07m and penetration to 121.5% at the end of Q3.

Quarterly Net Additions, Q4 07 – Q3 08

Source: Cellular News.

In related news, the regulator also announced that the number of mobile subscriptions rose by 111,000 in November 2008, the three domestic mobile operators thus having 11.95 million customers in total at the end of the month, with a population penetration level of 119.1 %.

Based on the number of SIM cards that can receive calls, by the end of November the market share of T-mobile increased from previous month’s 43.90 percent to 43.94 percent, the market share of Vodafone grew from 20.82 percent to 20.88 percent, while Pannon’s market share dropped from 35.29 percent to 35.18 percent.

The clients of the three mobile operators ported 4,700 numbers in October. According to the data of the NHH, a total of 241,806 numbers were ported since mobile number portability became available in May 2004.

Source: Cellular News.

Source: TeleGeography.

Lithunia subscriber base has reportedly crossed the mark of 5million, grows by almost 1% on September’08 in comparison with 4.96 million on 30 June 2008, in its third quarter update. The number of fixed telephony subscribers dropped by 0.39% to 787,752 on 30 September 2008, while the number of internet subscribers grew by 6.9% to 671,976. The revenues for telecommunication services grow by 3% in comparison to the revenues in the second quarter.

Source: Wireless Federation.

Eight domestic ISPs and one regional company have been given permission to offer voice-over-internet protocol (VoIP) calls in Serbia. Amongst the winners of permits were WiMAX network operator Verat, YUBC, Beotelnet, Informatika and INT CS.

Source: TeleGeography.

Spain's mobile phone subscriber base has rose to 50.74 million at the end of Q3'08 from 47.61 million since last year. Country's mobile penetration stood at 109.9%, growing from 105.3% since 2007, reports the telecoms regulator, CMT. Postpaid lines grew to 29.46 million from 27.06 million, and prepaid lines slipped to 20.22 million from 20.55 million. Mobile call minutes rose to 18.44 billion from 17.75 billion, with calls to fixed lines hiking to 1.84 billion from 1.83 billion and calls to mobiles growing to 15.49 billion from 14.84 billion.

Movistar took 45.8% of the total subscribers added, followed by Vodafone with 30.6%. Orange came third with 20.7%, Yoigo fifth with 1.5%, Euskaltel with 0.5% and other MVNOs 0.9%.

Source: Wireless Federation.

Magyar Telekom announces that the Office of the Macedonian Agency for Electronic Communication awarded a 3G licence to T-Mobile Makedonija AD Skopje on December 17, 2008.

Macedonia’s leading mobile operator, T-Mobile Makedonija, is granted the right use 3G frequency for nest 10 years.

The licence fee is set at $13.95 million, which was paid by the operator in December’08. The launch of the service is due within 6 months and the operator has to achieve 50% population coverage within 1 year and 80% population coverage within 3 years from the date of granting the license.

Source: Wireless Federation.

The Bulgarian Communications Regulation Commission (CRC), takes up a new schedule to lower the fees levied by the mobile operators by 45% by July’10. Bulgarian mobile phone users pay an average of 0.19-0.25 leva a minute when calling from mobile to mobile and 0.29-0.32 leva a minute when calling from landlines to mobile, the highest charged in European Union.

The mobile operators will have to lower their prices five times, on January 1 2009, July 1 2009, September 1 2009, January 1 2010 and July 1 2010, everytime by 7-9% and by the last cut the prices will fall down to 0.13-0.15 leva a minute regarding whether they call from a landline or a mobile.

CRC will also reportedly ask fixed-line telecoms to cut down the bulk mobile call termination rates, the fees paid by consumers when calling landlines from mobile numbers.

Bulgaria’s three telecom firms, Austria Telekom’s Mobiltel, Cosmote unit Globul and BTC, the dominant fixed-line operator that recently integrated its mobile subsidiary Vivatel, will be required by law to obey the ruling, but can appeal the decision in court.

The ruling will allow Mobiltel and Globul to maintain their dominant position in the Bulgarian mobile market, though they still are against the ruling. BTC, however, according to a localmedia report, was not happy with the decision, because it “did not change the current market situation,”.

Source: Wireless Federation.

­The Russian market surpassed 125% penetration during Q3 to finish the quarter on 126.9%, but growth showed no sign of slowing: in fact, the annual growth figure of 14.5% was up 0.7pp compared to the prior twelve-month period. With 179.81m customers, Russia remained the fourth largest market in the world, around 87m behind the USA and 39m ahead of Brazil.

Russia: Market Share, Top Three Operators

Source: Cellular News.

­Growth abandoned the West European cellular market in Q3 2008, as the global recession hit mobile spending patterns, according to a report issued by Strategy Analytics. While mobile data revenues continued to perform well, the voice market took a turn for the worse around the globe.

Collectively, mobile operators performed well in Q3 2008, with subscriber growth remaining very strong and profit margins stable. However, the mobile voice market did see revenue growth slow more than expected. Many operators in mature markets are recording falling voice revenues, and some operators in emerging markets such as China, Indonesia and Thailand are now finding it tough.

­Mobile messaging vendor, Airwide Solutions has published the results of an independent study on the use of mobile messaging across the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. The results prove that despite warnings of turmoil throughout the global economy, growth in mobile messaging shows no signs of slowing.

The study shows that the number of people sending text messages (SMS) across the EU is growing 3.3 percent year on year, a figure only beaten by MMS which is growing by 9.2 percent.

Slovenia's broadband penetration reached 19.5% at the end of the third quarter of 2008, up from 15.9% a year ago, with household penetration rising from 47% to 58% in the same period, according to the quarterly telecoms market report by the Agency for Post and Telecommunications (APEK). Incumbent telco Telekom Slovenije accounted for a 48.5% share of the high speed subscriber market, down from 51.5% at end-3Q 2007, and the country's largest alternative operator T-2 reached a share of 17.9%, up by 5.5 percentage points year-on-year. Direct fibre connections (FTTx) made up 9.4% of all broadband lines, compared to 2.1% a year earlier. APEK said that VoIP telephony subscribers reached 191,000 at the end of September 2008, up from 96,500 twelve months previously, and VoIP now accounts for 22% of the country's total fixed line subscriber base. Telekom Slovenije was reported to be the country's largest VoIP provider, with 45.5% of the market ahead of T-2 with 33%. Telekom's cellular subsidiary Mobitel remained the largest provider of mobile services by retail subscribers (figures including MVNOs), with 60.6% of the market, ahead of Austrian-owned Si.Mobil (27.3%), debitel (5.0%), Izimobil (2.5%), Tusmobil (4.4%) and T-2 (0.1%). IPTV subscribers in Slovenia rose by 150% year-on-year to 133,500 at end-September 2008, as cable TV viewers fell from 315,000 to 294,000 in the same period. Telekom Slovenije leads the IPTV segment, followed by T-2.

Source: TeleGeography.

Parliament has approved a law making Estonia the first country to allow voting by mobile phone.

Lawmakers approved a measure Thursday allowing citizens to vote by mobile phone in the next parliamentary elections in 2011.

Estonians were allowed to cast Internet ballots in last year's parliamentary vote.

The mobile-voting system, which has already been tested, requires that voters obtain free, authorized chips for their phones, said Raul Kaidro, spokesman of the SK Certification Center, which issues personal ID cards in Estonia.

The chip will verify the voter's identity and authorize participation in the electronic voting system, he said.

The system and software have proven effective and reliable in an independent security audit, Kaidro said. He dismissed security concerns, claiming the system "is the most secure way to authenticate digital signatures."

Kaidro said he expects the 2011 vote to be the first of its kind, though he said neighboring Finland and Sweden possess the software and technical capabilities to conduct a similar "cellular election."

Estonian officials said the Internet voting system in 2007 proved secure despite worries about hacker attacks, identity fraud and vote count manipulation.

Source: Cellular News.

Spain, at October end, has totalled the number of mobile phone lines to 50.59 million, adding 249,913 new mobile lines in October, up by 4.6% sunce 2007. According to a monthly report by Spanish telecoms regulator CMT, Vodafone has acquired 29.2% of the total net addition in October, whereas Orange grabbed 25.5%, then came Yoigo which accounted for 19.2% and Movistar accounted for 14.3% and MVNOs grabbed the remaining 1.9%. Mobile penetration reached 111.9 lines per 100 inhabitants in comparison to 107.0 in October 2007.

Spain added 181,034 postpaid subscribers and around 61,879 prepaid subscribers in October. Some 338,361 mobile phone numbers were ported in October, up by 5.9% versus since 2007. Yoigo saw a positive result by seeing a portability of 7,459 subscribers whereas Vodafone, Movistar and Orange registered a negative result.

Source: Wireless Federation.

Acccording to National Statistics Office, Malta, the country’s mobile subscriber base reached 381,955 at September end. Out of the total subscriber base 48,507 accounted for contract-based mobile subscriptions and 333,448 card-plan subscriptions.

Source: Wireless Federation.

­Spain's telecoms regulator, the CMT has reported that mobile number portability has remained roughly stable at around 300,000 per month, with 338,361 numbers ported in the month of October. This is a 5.9% rise on the same month a yeat ago.

The fourth network operator, Yoigo, and MVNOs gained 7,459 and 8,539 lines respectively - while Vodafone, Movistar and Orange all saw a net outflow of subscribers through MNP.

Vodafone took an average of 29.2% of the gain lines of the past three months, Orange, 25.5%; Yoigo, 19.2%; Movistar, from 14.3% and finally the MVNOs, the remaining 11.9%. The country added a gross amount of 242,913 lines in October.

The regulator also reported that there are now 1.44 million machine-to-machine connections in the country.

On the web: CMT

Source: Cellular News.

Millions of UK mobile users don’t understand international roaming charges – and go so far as to avoid making calls as a result. ­A new study, by market research firm, TNS indicates that it is confusion over service charges, in addition to the price of calls, which is preventing international roaming from really taking off.

A fifth of mobile users cite confusion over roaming pricing as their primary reason for using their phone less when abroad. Surprisingly this is especially true of younger consumers, where nearly a quarter (24%) of those aged 16-34 are still baffled by the costs of using their mobiles abroad.

The study also found that 17% of consumers would increase the amount of data services (like the mobile internet) they used if network providers offered them a fixed bundle package. Again this is truer of the 16 to 34 year olds, who are used to having bundled deals at home in the UK; 23% would use their phone more abroad if this type of deal were available. Similar findings were also seen in France where 14% of consumers said they would use their mobile more if they were offered a fixed bundle.

Source: Cellular News.

Telecom Italia SpA will cut an additional 4,000 jobs by 2011 as it concentrates on core growth markets in Italy and Brazil to confront the deteriorating economic situation, CEO Franco Bernabe said Wednesday.

The 4,000 job cuts are in addition to 5,000 announced in June, and will reduce Telecom Italia's work force by 14 percent from 64,000 to 55,000. Bernabe said the number of managers will be cut in half as the company seeks to simplify its organization.

Source: Cellular News.

The German mobile telecom sector is valued at $6.44Bn in Q3�Œ08, a rise of 2% since Q2�Œ08 but a fall of 1.8% since Q3�Œ07. The revenue rise since Q2�Œ08 is driven by seasonal effects, while the year-on-year fall was due to cuts in mobile termination rates and roaming fees. Vodafone and T-Mobile, the two leading incumbents grabbed 70% of the total revenue market even after strong efforts by E-plus and O2. E-Plus is the only German operator to show a positive result in y-o-y market share, majorly in prepaid segment. The company�fs market share advanced 1.2% to 15.3% of revenues in the Q3�Œ08.Comparing the figures of Q3�Œ07, Vodafone�fs market share dipped by 0.7% to 35.2%, while T-Mobile fell by 0.2% to 35.3%. O2 slid to fourth place, with its market share down by 0.1% to 14.3%.

The German mobile subscriber base rose by 2.6 million subscribers to a total of 106 million subscribers at Q3�Œ08 end. Market penetration jumped to 129.0% at September-end, from 113.4% the year before. T-Mobile and Vodafone ruled the market with 36.6% and 34.1% of the market respectively. Together, they lost 1.1% of the market to other operators, with E-Plus at no.3 with a market share of 16.1% and O2 at 13.2%.

Source: Wireless News.

Virgin Mobile UK launches an all-you-can-eat internet access tariff at 30p per day, which is claimed to be a tariff three times cheaper in comparison to other offers by rival networks. The new rates will be levied from December 8 applying to both contract and pre-pay subscribers, Virgin reveals.

“By providing unlimited access at a highly competitive rate, we are giving all our customers the opportunity to use the internet on their phone without having to worry about racking up huge bills or working out complicated price structures,” said Virgin Mobile MD Graeme Oxby. However, the twist in the story lies that the 30p/day rate is counted as offering unlimited access, to which a daily fair use policy of 25MB applies. The subscribers exceeding this limit will have to pay £2 for each extra MB.

Source: Wireless Federation.

Megafon continues to grow in the Russian mobile market in the month of October by adding 960,894 new subscribers. Megafon, country’s third largest operator, is competing closely with Vimpelcom, which stood at 45.88 million, 31.7% of total net addition. Megafon’s net additions counts to 38.7% share of Russia’s total net additions and totalled its subscriber base to 42.32 million. MTS lagged behind its rivals in terms of new additions, claiming just 19.4% with a subscriber base of 62.36 million in October, causing a threat to its number one position. Russia ended October with just over 182 million mobile subscribers, up from 179.54 million at the end of September.

Source: Wireless Federation.

T-Mobile grabs the 3G licecne in Macedonia, being awarded by country’s telecoms regulator, The Agency for Electronic Communications (AEK). T-Mobile was the only bidder for the three available 3G licences. T-Mobile after the payment of $12.83 million fee to the regulator, the operator will be awarded the radio spectrum by 2008 end and will have to launch the network in next six months and a coverage of 50% in 12 months. The licence will be valid for 10 years.

Source: Wireless Federation.

BH Telecom is going to launch 3.5G mobile and IPTV services in 2009, said Nedzad Residbegovic, General Manager of BH Telecom. Within four months the operator is intending to commence commercial services in larger cities and has revealed plans to install approximately 130 base stations across the country. The 3.5G services are based on HSPA Technology. BH Telecom is anticipating to spend USD6.5 million on the launch over the next five years. Moreover, Mr Residbegovic proposed for the new services would be between EUR35 and EUR70 per month.

Source: Wirelss Federation.

Russia's second largest mobile operator Vimpelcom psts its Q3'08 revenues of $2.84 billion, up 45.3% since last year, driven by a strong subscriber base. OIBDA grew by 36.7% to $1.38 billion, giving a margin of 48.8%. Net income rose by 41.3% to $269 million. Capex doubled since 2007 to $692.9 million from $339 million. Vimpelcom's Russian operation's revenues rose by 46.8% in Q3'08 since last year to $2.4 billion. Revenues from the Beeline mobile operation rose 23.2% to $2.03 billion. OIBDA in the Russian mobile segment reached $1.2billion, a rise of 39.3% from 871 million in Q3'07. Vimpelcom, at the end of Q3'08 had a subscriber base of 45.09 million in Russia, generating ARPU of $15.2, up 19.5% from 2007.

Source: Wireless Federation.

European Union is in favour of limiting the cost of SMS and mobile Web surfing between nation states. The ministers have given consent to cap the retail charge for sending a cross-border short text message at 11 euro cents, or 14 American cents. This implies that cost for sending Text across European borders would drop by an average of 62% from the current 29 euro cents. The data roaming charges are also expected to fall in the same line of SMS.

Source: Wireless Federation.

The Telecom regulator of Romania is anticipating that the market will grow by between 5% and 10% in 2009, following a double-digit rise in 2008. President of the National Regulatory Authority for Communications (ANC), Liviu Nistoran, said the growth stood at 16.7% in 2007. Nistoran further said, ‘we predict a two-figure market rise in 2008, with the most important sectors being the fixed broadband internet access and wireless internet, wireless data and mobile telephony.’ ‘I believe the communications market will continue to develop in 2009 as well, but [at] a slower rate, due to the economic crisis. I am counting especially on the constant wireless internet growth, [with] WiMAX licences due to become operational next year,’ he added.

Source: Wireless Federation.

OTE, Greece largest telecoms firm, posts a rise of 30% to $260.4 million in net proft in the third quarter attributed to a strong performance in its mobile phone units. The revenues increase to 0.7% to euro1.64 billion from euro1.63 billion in the third quarter of 2007. OTE chairman and CEO Panagis Vourloumis said strong results in the mobile phone sector more than offset a �gmediocre�h performance in fixed-line revenues in Greece. The company said, OTE expects 2009 profits to �gat least match�h this year�fs, despite the global economic crisis. The Greek Government and Deutsche Telekom smacked a deal in May on sharing OTE ownership and management control. Greece�fs parliament has approved the deal in June, the government and Deutsche Telekom each control 25 % plus one share of OTE.

Source: Wireless Federation.

­The European Commission, in a letter, has welcomed the French regulator's proposal to lower the wholesale rates charged by French mobile operators. The Commission also invited the regulator, ARCEP to keep up its efforts to set a target date by which they should equal the costs of an efficient operator in the next regulatory window that starts in 2011.

The Commission endorsed the regulatory measures proposed by the French regulator ARCEP: a price control obligation requiring French mobile operators SFR and Orange France to charge a termination rate of €0.03 per minute from 1 July 2010. Bouygues' rate is to be set at €0.04 per minute by the same date. ARCEP`s overall approach is to reduce termination rates towards the long run incremental cost (LRIC) of an efficient operator resulting in symmetric rates which will eventually be in line with the Commission's forthcoming Recommendation on termination rates. ARCEP set the target efficient cost-based mobile termination rate between €0.01 and €0.02 per minute, to be eventually reached by all mobile operators.

Source: Cellular News.

­Turkey has awarded three 3G licenses to the incumbent operators following an auction to battle over the spectrum allocation. Turkcell won the largest block (A License) with a bid of €358 million ($462 million), followed by Vodafone and Avea with bids of €250 million (US$323 million) and €214 million (US$276 million) respectively.

The award of the fourth available 3G license was cancelled due to a lack of interest.

The minimum value of the A License was set as US$405 million, while the minimum value was US$355 million for the B License, US$304 million for the C License and US$253 million for the D License.

Turkcell said that it expects to launch its 3G network by the middle of next year, while Avea has previously said that its network is ready for 3G services as soon as the licenses are awarded.

Only Turkcell was willing to bid for a 3G license in the original tender in 2007, after the other two operators, Vodafone and Avea refused to participate in the original auction unless mobile number portability was also offered. The license which was awarded to Turkcell was later cancelled due to the lack of competition.

Mobile number portability is due to be launched in the country in November.

Turkcell dominates the local market, controlling some 60% of customer base according to figures from the Mobile World analysts. Vodafone is second with 26% and Avea trails with just 14%. The country has nearly 54 million mobile phone users, which represents a market penetration level of 76%.

Source: Cellular News.

­Elisa continued its steady if unspectacular progress in Q3 08, adding 57.4k customers to bring its combined customer base to 2.83m. Annual growth stood at 7.9%, up from 6.9% in the previous twelve months. Given that Elisa’s markets of operation (Finland and Estonia) both have penetration rates in excess of 125%, such a growth rate is commendable, as is the consistency of its growth: in the past eight quarters, figures for net additions have not fallen outside the 30k – 80k range.

Source: Cellular News.

Avea, one of Turkey’s leading mobile operator sees a boost of 2.5 million new subscribers with the introduction MNP. Avea predicts that nearly 9 million mobile users in Turkey will switch their operators, taking advantage of this new service.

Source: Wireless Federation.

The Hungarian telecom regulator, National Communication Authority, launches two mobile licence tenders and a proposal to provide mobile infrastructure development. The two mobile licence will be valid for 15 years. According to Daniel Pataki, President NHH, the following descision has been taken in order to boost mobile market competition in the country. He also adds that though the country has a mobile penetration of 108%, countyry’s 20% population still doesn’t own a mobile phone and the price competition has been stagnant among the existing mobile operator i.e. T-Mobile, Pannon and Vodafone.

Looking at the present financial scenario, Pataki adds ‘We have called the tender now as market conditions could turn even more unfavorable, since nobody can tell when this global financial market turmoil could end’.

Source: Wireless Federation.

­The difference between mobile broadband and fixed broadband speeds is growing according to new research by broadband comparison site, Broadband-Expert. Fixed broadband services are now, on average, twice as fast as mobile broadband.

The research comes shortly after the UK's advertising standards agency (ASA) imposed a ban on an advert claiming mobile broadband offered “all the benefits of home broadband on the move”. However the provider claimed the advert was referring to the capabilities of mobile broadband as opposed to a technical comparison.

Broadband Expert clocked the average fixed line broadband speed at 3.61Mbs based on over 308,584 fixed line broadband speed tests compared to 1.57Mbs for mobile broadband (based on 5,345 tests). The gap has grown considerably due to a notable increase in the speed of fixed broadband services which are now 0.66Mbs faster than they were in February 2008 (when the average speed was recorded at 2.95Mbs). By comparison mobile broadband services surveyed by the same company in April 2008 have increased in speed by just 0.1Mbs.

Source: Cellular News.

France on Tuesday presented plans to set aside about a fifth of the country's prime television broadcasting spectrum for mobile Internet and television services by the end of 2009, in what supporters described as a major step toward creating a harmonized mobile broadband network in Europe.

France is the first major European country to reserve part of its most valuable broadcasting spectrum, the so-called UHF band, for mobile broadband and video services. Finland and Sweden have also said they plan to reserve the band for mobile services.

If a Europewide broadband network were to come to fruition, its greater scale would probably push down the cost of Internet services to consumers, especially in rural areas not reached by fast, fixed-line networks. It could also enable large mobile operators to sell services, like mobile TV or mobile broadband, across national borders, further increasing competition and lowering consumer prices.

The move was hailed by mobile operators and by the European Union's telecommunications commissioner, Viviane Reding, who is proposing that her office be given a greater role in influencing how EU countries redistribute the frequency.

Source: International Herald Tribune.

Spain adds 245,026 new mobile lines in August, with the total lines reaching 50.10 million at the end of the month. The growth was recorded at 5% on a y-to-y basis, reports the Spanish regulator, CMT. The mobile penetration reaches 110.9 lines per 100 inhabitants. The growth in M2M sector was up by 36.2% since last year, bringing the total number of mobile lines to 51.48 million. The number of postpaid subscribers added were 127,835 and the prepaid were 117,191. Vodafone, Yoigo and the MVNOs saw a positive growth in portability, whereas Movistar and Orange experienced a negative growth.

Vodafone added 18,581 new subscribers, Yoigo added 3,713 susbcribers and MVNOs recieved 1,851 net additions. On the flipside, Orange lost 18,056 ported subscribers, Movistar lost 6,089 ported subscribers.

Q2�Œ08 figures show Vodafone accounted for 29.4% of the total net additions, Movistar for 26.7%, Orange for 20.3%, Yoigo accounted for 14.5% and MVNOs for the rest 9.1%.

Source: Wireless Federation.

Romania sees the highest mobile penetration rate growth than any European Union (EU) country last year says the National Communications Authority (ANC). According to the sources, country’s penetration rate for cellular services rose by 25.5 percentage points to 106.2%, with more and more users now signing up for multiple mobile phone accounts to take advantage of special offers on individual tariffs. Around 26% of the population in urban areas have two mobile handsets where as 9% have three phones. At the end of 2007, Romania subscriber base was almost 23 million. There is net addition of 1.8 million subscribers in first half of 2008, added regulator.

Source: Wireless Federation.

The proposed legislation would oblige retailers to make product information available before sale, guarantee delivery within a maximum of 30 days and allow a statutory 14-day "cooling-off" period in which purchasers could change their minds.

Consumers would also be entitled to full refunds within seven days if goods fail to arrive, and companies would be banned from using some "get-out" clauses allowing them to supply products different from those advertised.

While an estimated 150 million Europeans use the Internet to shop, just one in five of those attempts to make purchases outside the home country, according to the European Commission.

European officials argue that the regulatory regime for e-commerce is vital because the sector is forecast to generate €128 billion, or $174 billion, across the European Union in 2008. The figure could grow by 230 percent in five years, officials say.

Source: Herald Tribune.

Eesti Telekom, the Estonian operator, has reported its financial results for the second quarter ended 30 June 2008, revealing a net profit of EUR6.5 million (USD10.3 million), a 6.4% fall from June 2007. Revenues fell to EUR100.1 million (USD158 million), as a result of the reduction in interconnection fees by the state regulator in November 2007. Eesti also indicated that slowing sales of telecoms equipment had impacted revenues, with the operator also confirming it is to continue its strategy of reducing personnel to cut operating costs. Wireless subscriber figures show a rise from last year, up to 755,000, and according to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms database, Eesti operates both GSM and 3G services under its Eesti Mobiiltelefon subsidiary, claiming 47% market share.

Source: TeleGeography.

Russia’s Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) said it had just under 87 million cellular subscribers across Russia and the CIS countries at the end of June, an increase of 520,000 in three months. MTS is the largest cellular operator in its home market, with 61.38 million customers at 30 June 2008, while its international operations include cellcos in Ukraine (19.13 million subscribers), Uzbekistan (4.37 million), Armenia (1.49 million) and Turkmenistan (570,000). The group also has 4.03 million customers in Belarus via a 49%-owned unconsolidated subsidiary.

Source: TeleGeography.

The number of Spanish mobile customers reached 49.44m at the end of Q1 08, with annual net additions of 2.47m. In proportionate terms, annual growth stood at 5.3%, down 2.5pp compared to the year-earlier figure. This is in line with a downward trend in growth, a trend which is hardly surprising given that mobile penetration reached 122.1% at the end of Q1 08.

W-CDMA Customers, Q2 06 – Q1 08

Spanish market leader Telefonica finished the quarter with just over 23.01m customers, having managed an annual growth rate of 5.5%. In terms of market share, it recorded a very slight improvement (0.1pp) to finish Q1 on 46.5%. Second-placed Vodafone also gained 0.1pp year on year, finishing the quarter on 29.9%. In real terms, its customer base stood at 14.79m, up 0.79m year on year. This is lower than both the previous year’s figure of 1.25m net additions and Telefonica’s 1.19m. Nonetheless, in proportionate terms Vodafone grew by 5.6%, the highest growth rate on the market excluding start-up Xfera.

France Telecom’s Amena was the slowest growing by some margin with an annual increase of just 0.2%. Having lost 0.37m customers in Q2 07, Amena bounced back with quarterly net additions of 0.23m and 0.17m in Q3 and Q4, but Q1 08 saw the loss of 7k, leaving the annual gain at a paltry 26k. At the end of Q1 08, it had 11.08m customers and market share of 22.4%, down 1.1pp year on year. Meanwhile, 3G operator Xfera gained 0.9pp but still remained a fairly insignificant presence with just 1.1% of the market, or 0.56m in real terms. Having launched services in Q4 06, it now seems too late for Xfera to make any sizeable inroads.

In fact, Xfera does not even have a 5% share of the 3G market, finishing Q1 08 on 4.6%. Vodafone is the 3G market leader with 5.26m W-CDMA connections, compared to 4.2m for Telefonica and 2.01m for Amena. Both Telefonica and Amena more than doubled their totals year on year, however, so we could see a close battle in the Spanish 3G market this year.

Source: Cellular News.

According to the annual report of the Georgian National Communications Commission (GNCC), sales in the country's electronic communications market (telecoms, TV and radio) reached GEL1.1 billion (USD784 million) in 2007, up 10% year-on-year. The sector accounts for 6.6% of Georgia's overall GDP, down from 7.5% in 2006. Cellcos earned 63.3% of overall revenues, ahead of fixed line telcos with 29.5% and TV and radio broadcasters with 7.2%.

Source: TeleGeography.

In Q1 08, the UK mobile customer base saw its first quarterly decline for two years, shedding 119k customers to finish the quarter on 70.67m. This is equivalent to a penetration rate of 116.0%. The losses were widespread, with O2, T-Mobile, Virgin and Tesco all suffering net declines. A similar range of companies also lost customers in Q1 07, but in that quarter a strong performance from Vodafone (723k net additions) ensured that the total customer base grew; in Q1 08, however, the highest figure for net additions was Orange’s 114k. Hutchison gained 75k and Vodafone 41k, but O2 lost 79k, T-Mobile 71k, Virgin 68k and Tesco 100k.

Quarterly Net Additions, Q1 07 vs Q1 08

Source: Cellular News.

Since 2005, mobile operators are noticing a steady depreciation of average revenue per user (ARPU). The reality is the European mobile market is saturated with over 100 percent of its population owning mobiles. Revenue growth strategies rooted in acquiring new customers are rendered ineffective. As a result, providers scrambled for state of the art services and applications for mobile devices. Headed by Italy, Europe found success with this infotainment solution. By late 2007, 2.6 million Europeans were already using mobile TV. Now the future of the mobile market in Eastern Europe rests in the growing popularity in mobile TV.

"Mobile TV refers to the transmission of audiovisual content to mobile devices," reports Frost and Sullivan Research Analyst, Saverio Romeo. "It means viewing any content on the move, anywhere and anytime. This concept completely changes the usage of audiovisual services, and consequently, the consumer's experience. In fact, the mobility not only allows users to view content on the move, but also to share content on the point of inspiration with other users introducing new forms of interactivity."

Eastern European countries are already tapping into Europe's success. New technologies such as MediaFLO, T-DMB, DVB-H and TDtv are being reviewed in various countries. In Poland, the Office for Electronic Communications (UKE) has launched the tender for 38 channels to major cities within the country. In Russia, MTS, the market leader, is ready to launch a mobile TV service offering 20 channels. In Hungary, the four companies of Vodafone Hungary, Nokia-Siemens Networks, T-Mobile Hungary, and Antenna Hungaria together launched a trial of a DVB-H network in Budapest in January 2008. The Czech Republic and Romania will not be left behind. Since the end of 2006, T-Mobile Czech Republic is running DVB-H trials in Prague with the help of the media company, Radiokomunikace. Orange Romania is currently orchestrating trials in Bucharest.

The inspiring success story of the Italian mobile operator, 3 Italia, commanded the attention of western and eastern European countries alike. "In 2006, 3 Italia launched its mobile TV (DVB-H) service. 3 Italia started the service in time for the football world cup and so had an astonishing take-up rate. The reason for this success was quite simple," says Saverio. "Football supporters do not really care about technologies. They want to view their teams when they are not at home at a good quality and at a package, which meets the needs of their wallets. 3 Italia managed to do all of this. The Italian mobile operator gained 400,000 subscriptions in 10 months. At the end of 2007, almost 900,000 Italians used 3 Italia's mobile TV platform. At the beginning of June 2008, 3 Italia launched a mobile TV service out of charge and ad-based."

The 2.6 million current European consumers are driven by three major factors: content quality, cost of service, and cost of mobile device. Satisfying the target consumers, in Eastern Europe, brings challenges for the operators and providers. Success depends on having 3G and beyond 3G network coverage for unicast (streaming video to a mobile device via the cellular networks) and on-demand solutions. Operators and providers must also establish and pay for the high cost of quality network infrastructures like DVB-H. The regulatory framework should be established to allocate spectrum. Along with this, handsets with sufficient audiovisual functionalities and easy-to-use interface must be readily available. Finally, the price must be attractive enough to draw in a vast audience.

The evident success of this new mobile service offers an exciting opportunity for mobile operators and providers in Eastern European countries, as they jump on the mobile TV bandwagon.

Source: Cellular News.

The number of fixed line broadband connections in Hungary stood at 1.437 million at the end of May, up from 1.124 million a year earlier, according to data published by the industry regulator the National Communications Authority of Hungary (NCAH). Of the total, 778,000 were ADSL subscriptions, while a further 468,000 took cable internet services from one of the four main providers UPC, T-Kabel, FiberNet and Digi. At the same date, the number of main lines in service fell by 12,000 in May to 3.198 million from 3.210 million in April, lowering the fixed line phone penetration rate to 31.8%. The NCAH does not keep a record of mobile broadband subscriptions.

Source: TeleGeography.

An EU-wide survey of 27,000 households has revealed the emergence of new consumption patterns in telecoms services in Europe. Technological progress and competition have brought more choice to European consumers as almost a quarter (24%) of households have given up their fixed telephone in favour of mobile phones while 22% of them are using their computer from home to make phone calls over the Internet.

In an increasing number of Member States, European households are using wireless access to connect to the Internet, via mobile or satellite networks. Meanwhile, 29% of European households buy bundled telecoms and media packages, an increase of nearly 10% since last year.

Nevertheless, the top priority for consumers in this fast evolving environment remains the quality of services.

Source: Cellular News.

Ireland’s independent telecoms regulator the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) has outlined new proposals designed to expand the definition of wholesale unbundled access to take on board fibre-based networks and not just the DSL platforms currently covered. Siliconrepublic.com says that the move is seen as a means of driving broadband uptake in the Republic by encouraging alternative operators to expand their local loop unbundling (LLU) footprints. In a consultation document published yesterday, ComReg concludes that former monopoly operator eircom controls 70% of all xDSL connections in the country and that furthermore, DSL technology accounts for 60% of all broadband connectivity in the country. As a result, ComReg contends that only eircom has significant market power (SMP) in the broadband segment and that it now intends to expand wholesale broadband access to include not just DSL, but all forms of local access technology, including fibre and any next generation networks (NGNs), the incumbent may look to deploy. In addition, ComReg is looking at new measures that would require eircom to provide alternative operators with at least five years notice if it decided to close down a local exchange in which they had co-located equipment.

The regulator’s plans have been broadly welcomed by smaller operators with Smart Telecom’s manager of regulatory affairs, John Quinn, saying the decision to create a ‘technology neutral environment’ would encourage alternative operators to invest in new networks. ‘This will put Ireland in line with other European countries and means that the access network is not just copper but future fibre networks,’ he said. Smart now intends to invest more heavily in its LLU programme which currently involves 37 exchanges across Ireland, covering around half a million potential subscribers.

Source: TeleGeography.

News agency Trend Capital reports that Azerfon, known locally as Nar Mobile, deployed 55 new base stations last month, lifting overall network coverage to 80% of the Azerbaijan's territory. The cellco was granted a GSM-900/1800 licence in December 2005 and launched GSM/GPRS/EDGE services in late March 2007. It currently has an estimated 700,000 subscribers.

Source: TeleGeography.

Swedes are increasingly placing calls, surfing and sending text messages, which led to sharply increased traffic and increased revenues for mobile network operators in 2007. For the first time, total revenues from services in mobile networks exceed revenues from fixed telephony according to a report from the telecoms regulator, the National Post and Telecom Agency (PTS).

In December 2007, nearly half a million customers used mobile Internet services, a sharp increase from just over 90,000 subscriptions one year earlier. Data traffic in mobile networks has increased tenfold since 2006. Mobile users placed more, and longer, calls in 2007 and sent an average of 40 text messages per month. Revenues from mobile services totalled SEK 19.7 billion in 2007, which is an increase of some 12 per cent since 2006. Mobile Internet services, by means of USB sticks or USB modems, account for more than SEK 1 billion of such revenues.

“We take mobile telephony for granted. We are used to placing calls whenever and almost wherever we want. 2007 was the year when even broadband users could seriously consider mobile Internet services when choosing a provider,” says Marianne Treschow, Director-General of PTS.

There were nearly 2.8 million subscriptions for fixed or mobile broadband at the end of 2007, which corresponds to 62 subscriptions per 100 households. Broadband services grew by more than 30 per cent in 2007.

The content service growing the fastest in fixed broadband networks is IPTV, for which there were 355 000 subscriptions at the end of 2007, compared with 50 000 subscriptions the year before. Subscriptions for IP-based telephony in broadband networks rose by more than 50 per cent to 623 000 subscriptions.

Source: Cellular News.

Hungary’s incumbent mobile operators Pannon, Vodafone and T-Mobile collectively signed up a net 208,033 new subscribers last month to boost the country’s total cellular base to 11.43 million. Of the total, 10.26 million subscriptions were classed as ‘active’ by telecoms regulator NHH at the end of April, equating to a cellular penetration rate of 113.9% (up from 111.8% a month earlier). Data published by the watchdog shows that Pannon lost market share last month, from 35.29% in March to 35.03% a month later, while T-Mobile edged its own share upwards from 43.88% to 44.20%. Third-placed cellco Vodafone also saw its slice of the pie declining slightly from 20.83% to 20.77%, NHH said.

Source: TeleGeography.

The CDMA Development Group (CDG) has announced that the CDMA industry continued its strong growth through the first quarter of 2008, increasing its customer base by almost 17% over the past year to 451 million CDMA subscribers worldwide, with CDMA2000 and CDMA2000 1xEV-DO reaching 438 million and 97 million, respectively. The Asia-Pacific (APAC) and Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) regions claimed the highest year-over-year percentage subscriber growth for CDMA2000, while the Americas and EMEA experienced the highest percentage of subscriber growth for CDMA2000 1xEV-DO.

In APAC, the total CDMA subscribership (cdmaOneTM and CDMA2000) rose to 231 million, which accounts for 51% of total worldwide CDMA subscribers and marks a 30% increase from March 2007 to March 2008. North America’s 140 million subscribers claim the second highest percentage of global CDMA subscribers at approximately 31%, with CALA’s 62.8 million representing approximately 14%. In EMEA, CDMA subscribership reached 17.7 million.

Over 97% of CDMA subscribers around the world are now taking advantage of 3G CDMA2000 services. CDMA2000 grew by 38% in APAC over the past year, bringing the total number of CDMA2000 subscribers in the region to 223 million, accounting for almost 51% of the world’s users. North America is the second largest region for CDMA2000 with nearly 138 million, or 31% of the global users. In EMEA, the CDMA2000 subscriber base reached 16.5 million.

CDMA2000 1xEV-DO subscribership increased to 97 million users globally, with 52 million subscribers in North America and 39 million subscribers in APAC continuing to comprise the majority of the world’s EV-DO users at 54% and 40%, respectively. Uptake is surging in North America and EMEA where increased demand for mobile broadband raised subscribership by 74%and 123%, respectively. The CDG attributes this growth to outstanding broadband performance and, for emerging markets, 3G CDMA’s suitability across varied terrain to serve as an alternative to wireline Internet access.

To date, 38 EV-DO Revision A (Rev. A) networks are in commercial operation around the world, with another 35 networks in deployment.

Source: Cellular News.

The Dutch broadband market grew by 2% in Q1 2008 to reach 5.55 million users, eclipsing the growth rates of 1.7% and 1.6% seen in the last two quarters of 2007, reports online news portal Telecompaper. By the end of March this year the leading ISP was Ziggo, the newly created branding of the former cable assets of @Home, Casema and Multikabel. The group had 1.242 million broadband users at the end of March, up 30,000 quarter-on-quarter. Ziggo led second-placed Het Net, owned by KPN, which had 659,000 xDSL users at the same date (+16,000 users) and UPC Nederland was in third with 650,300 broadband customers (+10,800). KPN’s second largest xDSL ISP Planet shed customers in the period under review, however, ending the quarter with 558,000 subscribers, down 14,000 on the start of the year. Meanwhile, Internet van KPN signed up 19,000 net new additions, Telecompaper said, to reach a total of 554,000 xDSL customers at 31 March 2008, making it the fourth largest broadband ISP overall in the Netherlands.

Source: TeleGeography.

France added around 675,000 new broadband users in the first three months of this year to boost the country’s high speed internet user base from 15.551 million to 16.225 million, reports the country’s regulator Arcep in its latest review of the domestic market. On an annualised basis, the French residential and business broadband market climbed 18.6% from 13.676 million at the end of March 2007, the report said. ADSL continues to be the overwhelmingly popular access technology, accounting for 15.475 million access lines, with the remainder made up by cable, FTTx or satellite services. Arcep also reported a strong rise in wholesale access lines in the period under review, up 338,000 lines to 7.825 million. France had also unbundled 5.521 million local loops by the start of April 2008, with some 4.012 million subscribers taking fully unbundled services.

Source: TeleGeography.

Ukrtelecom’s 3G mobile service, offered under the Utel brand, increased its subscriber base by 17.1% in April to 16,400, an improvement on the 3.7% rise in March, but still performing well below the company’s expectations. The Utel W-CDMA/HSDPA network was launched on 1 November 2007 in Ukraine’s six largest cities; the state-run operator is Ukraine’s only UMTS licence holder.

Source: TeleGeography

Macedonian alternative fixed line operator On.Net yesterday announced it was launching commercial voice telephony services in competition with the incumbent, Deutsche Telekom-backed Makedonski Telekom which trades under the T-Com banner, and that it intends to introduce new services and prices up to 60% below those offered by its established rival. In a press release reported by Makfax, On.Net, which was set up as an internet service provider in the country and has been owned by Telecom Slovenije since 2006, said it would create a new unit, Ontel, as a separate entity to offer the service. It is understood Ontel will kick off with an introductory offer of a free connection and free calls to other Ontel users. In addition, calls to mobile numbers will cost up to 15%-20% less, it said, while domestic long-distance (DLD) and international long-distance (ILD) voice calls would be up to 60% cheaper. Ontel will begin selling its service packages from 12 May in the capital Skopje only, setting its basic monthly fee at MKD990 (USD24.63) including 300 on-net voice minutes. The service will be rolled out to other areas ‘soon’ it said. On.Net was cleared to enter the domestic fixed line voice telephony market last year but has struggled to do so citing the high interconnection prices imposed by Makedonski Telekom as the reason for a delay.

Source: TeleGeography.

Vodafone UK has revamped its mobile internet tariffs and henceforth, contract customers will no longer need to buy an additional internet bundle for £7.50 but instead every plan will automatically include internet access. Customers will get up to 500MB of data traffic per month included with their existing tariffs.

Price plans start at £25 and customers who select a £40 or higher price plan will also for the first time have the choice of unlimited texts, unlimited landline calls or unlimited Vodafone to Vodafone calls.

Source: Cellular News.

Orange UK has unveiled its third Digital Media Index, a detailed report examining trends in customer consumption of digital media. The latest findings reveal a sharp increase in mobile internet access alongside traditional fixed line broadband.

Key findings from the spring report include:

• Mobile internet becomes part of day-to-day life - with a 35% increase in page impressions
• Mobile TV takes off - with an 87% increase in the total hours viewed
• Video downloads gain momentum - having doubled in the last year
• Single music track downloads reach new heights - with a record-breaking 289,000 tracks downloaded in December alone
• Text messaging becomes more popular than ever - with over 1.3 billion messages sent a month - an increase of 21%

Matthew Kirk, Director of Portals for Orange, said: “The mobile phone has truly taken its place as a multimedia content device. The popularity of mobile TV, music and gaming has surged as customers use the mobile internet alongside home broadband to stay connected wherever they are. It really is the third screen in our lives for entertainment, communication and information alongside the TV and the PC ”.

These figures are in comparison to the second Orange Digital Media Index released in November 2007.

Source: Cellular News.

The Netherlands’ incumbent fixed and mobile operator KPN Telecom has reported a 3.5% annual rise in first-quarter core net profit, driven by strong growth at its international mobile operations, and says there are strong indications that its Dutch businesses are beginning to bottom out.

Source: TeleGeography.

"The European broadband market is developing rapidly and already outstrips that of the United States," the EC wrote. It estimated some 99.2 million broadband lines in the EC, compared with 81.6 million in the United States and Canada combined, and 43.1 million in Japan and South Korea together. In 2007, the number of regular active Internet users in Europe rose by 40 million, to a total of 250 million.

"It is a welcome change of political direction that today, ICT, the main driver of European growth, is being promoted by all 27 EU Member States in their national policies. This helps Europe compete internationally and modernizes the daily lives of Europeans," comments EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media Viviane Reding. "It is especially good news that 77 percent of EU businesses, 67 percent of schools and 48 percent of doctors are now benefiting from fast broadband connections."

Ticking off Europe's broadband achievements, in its report the EC says more than 96 percent of European schools now are connected to the Internet -- two-thirds of them to broadband, up from almost zero in 2001. In the health sector, 57 percent of doctors now send or receive patient data, up from 17 percent in 2002, with 46 percent of them receiving results from laboratories electronically, up from only 11 percent in 2002. Some 77 percent of EU businesses had a broadband connection in 2007, up from 62 percent in 2005, and 77 percent use the Internet for dealing with banks, up from 70 percent in 2005.

Source: Telecom Web.

Source: Cellular News.

Source: Cellular News.

The Russian wireline operator PeterStar has reported revenues of USD117 million in 2007, up 23% year-on-year. EBITDA grew 20% to USD56 million and net profit was up 40% at USD33 million, CNews reports. The firm says revenues from data transmission and internet access services were up 34% annually and now account for 36% of overall sales. PeterStar is an affiliate of the Synterra group and operates in Russia’s North West region.

Source: TeleGeography.

Ka-ching, ka-ching. European wireless carriers are being told to expect 50 percent of the population to use their mobile handsets to access the broadband Internet by 2012. But most carriers won't be able to handle it alone.

To accomplish this, mobile operators will be partnering with fixed-infrastructure providers, with Arthur D. Little and Exane BNP Paribas forecasting that 20 percent of mobile broadband traffic could be carried through fixed networks.

Source: TelecomWeb.

Belarus’ Deputy Minister of Informatisation and Communications Nikolai Strukov, is predicting that the country will be home to 500,000 broadband internet users by 2010, writes online news portal e-belarus.org. According to the minister, approximately 260,000 of these will be receiving high speed internet services from the national PTO Beltelecom, while a further 100,000 will be using alternative operators, he said. Home networks will also help to increase the number of xDSL users, Mr. Strukov added. The minister went on to say that the 500,000 forecast was a conservative one and that he expects the figure could be even higher, driven by the strong uptake of mobile broadband subscribers using 3G technology.

Beltelecom currently has 66,000 broadband internet subscribers and accounts for roughly 60% of the national market, with alternative service providers and resellers claiming the remainder.

Source: TeleGeography.

Regulator Anacom has published fixed line market statistics for the fourth quarter of 2007. Portugal Telecom’s market share of ‘accesses installed at customer request’ fell to 71.9% from 78.1% at the start of the year as it continued to lose out to alternative operators, most notably Sonaecom-backed Novis, which boosted its share from 9% to 14.4% following the acquisition of the residential and SoHo business of Oni Telecom. Among the fastest growing fixed line operators is Vodafone, having tripled its market share from 0.4% to 1.2% in just twelve months.

Source: TeleGeography.

The European Commission hopes to lift average broadband penetration in the European Union to 30% by 2010, up from around 20% today, in a bid to stimulate economic growth. The EC’s Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding said yesterday that only eight of the bloc's 27 member states were currently beating the US in terms of broadband usage, while the average penetration rate lagged behind the 22.1% figure reported in the United States. Although a number of nations, such as Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden have rates closer to 30%, Reding wants to see a significant improvement across the board within the next two years. The Commissioner believes that her new telecoms reforms, currently before the European Parliament and EU states for approval, will help the trading bloc reach this 30% target. Reding hopes the reform bill will be adopted by April 2009 ahead of planned European elections in June.

Source: TeleGeography.

A third GSM network operator has launched was Albania last week. Eagle Mobile, a joint venture between Turkish Calik Holding, Turkish Telecom and the Albanian State has launched with coverage in Tirana and Durres cities, the territory between and country's the only International Airport.

The company says that it now covers about half the country's population, using infrastructure supplied by Huawei and Amdocs.

93 percent of the employees of Eagle Mobile are Albanian, and the company plans to create a field of activity for more then 1000 Albanian people.

The country currently has two mobile operators, Vodafone and AMC. According to figures from the Mobile World, the country ended last September with some 2.2 million subscribers, representing a population penetration level of 61%

Albania is a parliamentary democracy that is transforming its economy into a market-oriented system. The Albanian capital, Tirana, is home to 750,000 of the country's 3.6 million population. As a result of the opening of the country in the post-communist era, Albania is now undergoing a development boom as its telecommunications, transport and utilities infrastructure is being revamped.

Source: Cellular News.

Greek alternative fixed line and broadband operator ForthNet’s full year 2007 net losses widened to EUR32.5 million (USD60.0 million) from EUR16.7 million in 2006, on increased costs of local loop unbundling (LLU) and subscriber acquisition. Annual revenues grew 21.7% year-on-year to EUR119 million, as broadband subscribers doubled in twelve months to reach approximately 200,000 at the end of December (and subsequently reached 210,000 at the end of February 2008). LBITDA widened from EUR5 million in 2006 to EUR20 million last year, but the company expects to start posting gains in the second half of 2008 on improved operating performance and a new LLU subscriber acquisition cost accounting method. ForthNet’s CAPEX reached EUR64.3 million in 2007, up from EUR36 million the previous year. As of February 2008 it claimed to be Greece’s market leader for LLU customers with a 35% market share.

Source: TeleGeography.

T-Home, the fixed line division of German incumbent Deutsche Telekom (DT), is forecasting a drop in revenues of between 4% and 6% during 2008, and a decline in EBITDA of 5% to 8%, according to T-Home CEO Timotheus Hoettges. Results for the full year 2007, published last month, showed falls of 8% in revenue and 14% in EBITDA. Hoettges said that the current decline should be stemmed by 2010, when increases in broadband customers will entirely offset losses in fixed line telephony. He added that cost savings of up to EUR1 billion (USD1.57 billion) are expected in the coming year, most of which will be used to attract new customers. The telco hopes to attract an additional 1.6 million DSL customers in Germany by the close of 2008. Hoetgess said that he expects that T-Home's revenue and EBITDA decreases will level out by 2010, when the fixed line losses have been entirely offset by increases in broadband customers and revenues.

Source: TeleGeography.

The European Commission hopes to lift average broadband penetration in the European Union to 30% by 2010, up from around 20% today, in a bid to stimulate economic growth. The EC’s Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding said yesterday that only eight of the bloc's 27 member states were currently beating the US in terms of broadband usage, while the average penetration rate lagged behind the 22.1% figure reported in the United States. Although a number of nations, such as Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden have rates closer to 30%, Reding wants to see a significant improvement across the board within the next two years. The Commissioner believes that her new telecoms reforms, currently before the European Parliament and EU states for approval, will help the trading bloc reach this 30% target. Reding hopes the reform bill will be adopted by April 2009 ahead of planned European elections in June.

Source: TeleGeograpy.

The Netherlands was home to 2.53 million consumer VoIP subscribers at the end of 2007, up 7.3% on the previous quarter, reports telecompaper. The online portal says the rise was driven by increased take-up of DSL VoIP and continued demand for cable VoIP alternatives. The total Dutch consumer telephony market stood at 5.69 million connections by the start of this year, up 22,000 lines year-on-year, despite a 27.5% drop in traditional PSTN/ISDN lines to 2.847 million by the end of last year. Telecompaper estimates KPN’s share of the digital telephony market climbed to 33.5% by 31 December 2007, thanks to the launch of DSL and voice telephony services under the Telfort banner – which is targeting the entry-level user segment. In Q4 2007 the former monopoly added 61,000 new customers (up 7.8% on Q3 2007), while second-placed IP telephony provider Zesko (@Home, Casema and Multikabel) recorded 54,000 net new additions in the fourth quarter to end the year with 710,000 VoIP users. UPC Nederland was the third largest VoIP provider by subscribers with 489,200 customers.

Source: TeleGeography.

In 2004, there were only 520 square miles of networked municipal Wi-Fi. However, ABI Research forecasts a nearly sixty-fold increase over the next several years, to more than 30,000 square miles. Varying levels of maturity and acceptance exist within this market, spread across global regions and individual countries. The following is a snapshot of some major variations, according to recent analysis from ABI Research:

• North America: Leads in deployments; but in many cases, the region employs the wrong business plan of free consumer access and free infrastructure; consolidating incumbent service providers view municipal Wi-Fi as a competitive threat.
• Europe: Mobile-oriented rather than PC-oriented; incumbents initially resisted municipal Wi-Fi but now recognize in-building limitations and are incorporating it within service bundles for nomadic broadband Internet access, or as a way to compete out-of-region.
• Asia-Pacific: Status varies widely, but rapid uptake in advanced countries such as South Korea is resulting in innovative applications and the development of new end-user devices to leverage municipal Wi-Fi.
• Emerging Regions: Equipment costs remains prohibitive; there is interest in the technology, but compared with more basic services such as electricity, funding is a challenge; these regions are likely to be late adopters.

Source: Newsletter Analyst Insider from ABI Research.

Israeli telco Bezeq has announced results for the year ended 31 December 2007. Revenue for the twelve month period rose 1.4% to ILS12.4 billion (USD3.5 billion) from ILS12.2 billion recorded in 2006. Operating profits jumped 49.3% to ILS2.3 billion, while EBITDA increased by 19.7% to ILS4.1 billion, with EBITDA margin increasing to 33.1% from 28%. Bezeq’s operating areas had mixed results; wireless subsidiary Pelephone and international services provider Bezeq International saw increases in revenues of 4.6% and 27.7% respectively to ILS4.7 billion and ILS1.3 billion. By contrast Bezeq’s fixed line operations saw revenues slip 1.5% to ILS5.7 billion, falling from ILS5.8 billion the year before. Net profits – not given in the case of the fixed line operations – increased for Bezeq International (up 59.4%) and Pelephone (up 20.4%) to ILS153 million and ILS585 million. Bezeq states that the increases in revenue for 2007 were driven by rising demand for broadband and cellular services, as well as an increase in subscriber numbers following several marketing initiatives, and a focus on operating efficiency.

Operationally; Pelephone’s wireless subscriber base rose 8% to 2.6 million of which 749,000 (28%) were connected to its 3G network. Wireline broadband customers rose by 8% to 963,000, although active fixed lines fell by 1.7% to 2.7 million.

Source: TeleGeography.

Orange France announced yesterday the launch of a 3.5G HSDPA-based service for corporate customers in Lyon. The new product promises to double downlink connection speeds for users from 3.6Mbps up to a maximum 7.2Mbps. The company says deployment of faster HSDPA in other major towns and cities across France should be underway by the summer. The operator is hoping to reach 71% of the population with 3.5G coverage by the end of 2008. It also says it is looking to achieve 99% population coverage with EDGE and to have deployed 30,000 Orange Wi-Fi hotspots. Orange is offering the new package as part of its Business Everywhere solutions. It is launching with three mobile handsets compatible with 3G+ (HSDPA at 7.2Mbps and HSUPA) which can also be adapted to laptop computers using USB key (Huawei E270), PCMCIA Card (Option GX 301) and PC Express Card (Huawei E870).

Source: TeleGeography.

Slovak Telekom has posted total revenue of SKK31.5 billion (USD1.5 billion) for 2007, up 3.1% year-on-year, as a 7.8% increase in mobile revenue more than offset a 1.9% in fixed line sales. EBITDA grew 19.3% to SKK16.3 billion while net income almost trebled to SKK6.2 billion. While strong customer growth in the mobile and broadband sectors helped boost the results, net income was affected by one-off gains from the sales of Radiokomunikacie and real estate, as well as the release of reserves following success in a major legal competition case.

Source: TeleGeography.

Swisscom has announced that in the year ended 31 December 2007 revenues rose 14.9% to CHF11.09 billion (USD10.7 billion), while EBITDA was 18.9% higher at CHF4.5 billion. The increase was primarily attributable to Swisscom’s May 2007 acquisition of Italian ISP Fastweb. On a like-for-like basis net revenue increased by 0.3%; declining revenues from its traditional fixed line business were offset by growth in its outsourcing business and broadband operations. Gains from the sale of subsidiaries Antenna Hungaria and Infonet helped the company report a 29.4% increase in net income for the year, to CHF2.07 billion.

At the end of 2007 Swisscom claimed 5.29 million fixed lines in service, of which 1.6 million were DSL. At the same date the company had 5.01 million wireless customers, a net increase of 375,000.

Source: TeleGeography.

Hanover, Germany (dpa) - Internet providers called Wednesday for Germany to free up radio frequencies so that rural villages can hook up to broadband services.

Last year Germany hooked up 5 million high-speed internet connections to homes and offices, bringing its total lines to 20 million. But it is too expensive to lay cables to isolated country places.

Source: Cellular News, based on dpa.

The most striking broadband number for the fourth quarter of 2007 is the growth of Sky's subscriber numbers.  For the fifth quarter in a row, Sky was by far the strongest major ISP in terms of adding subscribers and increasing market share.  In this case it added 260,000 new broadband lines, 42% of the total net adds in the quarter, overtook Orange to become the fifth largest ISP, and added 1.4% to its share of the market.

Source: Point Topic.

Turkey’s largest mobile operator by subscribers Turkcell has reported full year 2007 net profit that rose by 54% year-on-year to USD1.35 billion, as consolidated revenues climbed 35% to USD6.3 billion. The GSM provider’s annual EBITDA reached USD2.6 billion, up 44.3% on its 2006 figure. Turkcell’s group subscriber base grew by 19.5% on an annual basis to 47.1 million (35.4 million of them in Turkey) as of 31 December 2007, with domestic annualised monthly ARPU rising by 18% year-on-year to USD14.3 (USD12.1), and average monthly minutes of usage (MOU) amongst Turkish subscribers increasing by 9% to 76.3 minutes (70.3). Turkcell’s Ukrainian subsidiary Astelit’s revenues increased by 191% in 2007 to USD256 million (USD88 million). Turkcell also owns stakes in four other GSM operators in partnership with TeliaSonera via their shared joint venture Fintur International. Fintur majority-owns market leading cellcos in Georgia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan (Geocell, Azercell and GSMK respectively), plus the second largest operator in Moldova, Moldcell.

Source: TeleGeography.

Portugal Telecom (PT) posted a 14.4% drop in net profit in full-year 2007, with growth at domestic mobile network operating unit TMN offset by redundancy costs and weak wireline performance. PT said its annual net income fell to EUR742 million (USD1.1 billion), down from EUR867 million in 2006, on revenues that rose 6.6% to EUR6.1 billion.

Source: TeleGeography.

Irish cableco UPC Ireland (which includes the former operations of ntl and Chorus Ireland) reported that its full-year revenues climbed 17% from USD262.6 million in 2006 to USD307.2 million in 2007. The group’s operating profits were up 31% year-on-year from USD79.9 million to USD104.7 million on the back of a 25,000 rise in customers to 592,300 over the year. UPC Ireland’s broadband base expanded 45% y-o-y to reach more than 80,000, while the number of people signed up to its new voice telephony service climbed to more than 10,000.

Source: TeleGeography.

Telefonica has posted a 2007 net profit of EUR8.91 billion (USD13.38 billion), up 42.9% year-on year on the back of a strong performance by its wireless and Latin American operations. Operating income before depreciation and amortisation (OIBDA) for the twelve months ended 31 December 2007 rose by 19.3% to EUR22.8 billion, while full year revenues rose 6.7% to EUR56.44 billion.

Source: TeleGeography.

Europe’s largest telco by revenue, Deutsche Telekom (DT), reports today that it achieved, and in some cases exceeded, its financial targets for 2007. The telco’s adjusted net profit came in at EUR3.0 billion (USD4.8 billion) for full year 2007, down from EUR3.85 billion one year previously, a 22% fall, principally due to an increase in income taxes of EUR400 million. Adjusted EBITDA was stable year-on-year, at EUR19.3 billion (2006: EUR19.4 billion). Although domestic sales slipped by 5.4% to EUR30.7 billion, this was offset by international sales growth of 10.26% to EUR31.8 billion, leaving total group revenue up slightly at EUR62.5 billion. The group’s outlook for the coming year is that adjusted EBITDA will remain constant, and it intends to continue its policy of paying ‘attractive dividends’. DT’s domestic fixed line operation T-Home is expecting its share of new customers in the German broadband market to be at least 45%, whilst American cellular subsidiary T-Mobile USA is expected to see growth in its subscriber base of three million.

Source: TeleGeography.

British cableco Virgin Media has announced it added a record number of new subscribers in the fourth quarter ended 31 December 2007. The company added 272,100 new revenue generating units (RGUs – subscriptions to one or more of Virgin's broadband, cable TV, mobile and landline telephony services) in the quarter, up from 186,700 in the previous three months. At the end of December 2007 Virgin claimed 3,701,200 broadband and 4,135,300 telephony customers.

Source: TeleGeography.

World’s biggest telecommunication company Vodafone has unveiled a new service in Spain, which enables its mobile consumers to turn their handsets into a fixed telephone at home.

Vodafone is about to start selling the service hoping to reach 9.6 million homes which have no broadband Internet access.

Vodafone launched similar services in other European countries such as Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Greece, where it now has 4 million fixed-line customers.

MADRID -(Dow Jones)- The number of mobile phone lines in Spain rose 7.3% in 2007 to a total of 50.2 million, the telecommunications regulator CMT said Wednesday.

At the end of the year, Spain had a mobile telephone penetration rate of 112%, or 112 lines per 100 people, the CMT said.

Of the 3.4 million new cellular lines added last year, Vodafone's Spanish unit picked up roughly 40% of them, followed by Telefonica with 35%.

TeliaSonera's Spanish unit, Yoigo, had 18% of the new mobile lines while France Telecom's operator Orange added 16%.

The remaining new lines were picked up by Spain's smaller low-cost MVNO operators, which buy airtime from the larger operators.

Consumer VoIP subscriber growth continues to soar in Western Europe, reaching 21.7 million at mid-year 2007, up from 15.6 million only six months earlier. TeleGeography estimates that the ranks of European VoIP subscribers had grown to 28.9 million by year-end 2007.

While VoIP is often associated with competitive carriers and cable companies, many European incumbents have counterattacked by launching their own VoIP services, often with great success. France Telecom has emerged as by far the largest consumer VoIP provider in Europe, while BT, Telecom Italia, and KPN all rank among the top ten European VoIP operators.

As these rankings suggest, the European consumer VoIP market remains fragmented and highly diverse, featuring a wide range of provider types and business models. In some countries, incumbents dominate; in others, competitive carriers have gained the advantage. Similarly, VoIP adoption differs widely across nations. For example, 34 percent of all French households subscribe to VoIP, compared to only 11 percent in Germany.

Source: TeleGeography.

A total of 52 percent of Irish consumers with a fixed line in their home subscribe to some form of bundled service, according to a Trends Series Survey into telecoms service usage from regulator ComReg. The most common bundle is fixed line calls, line rental and internet access - selected by 51 percent of respondents. The survey was conducted by Millward Brown IMS in October and November 2007. Mobile phone ownership for residential consumers reached 90 percent in Q4 2007, with 76 percent of consumer mobile phone owners using pre-paid models. Pre-paid mobile phone usage is higher for 15-24 year olds (89%) and those with no fixed-line at home (82%). A total of 54 percent of respondents use the internet from any location, with 48 percent of respondents having home internet connections. Of those with home internet connections, 68 percent are using broadband. DSL is the top broadband access technology for home internet users, with 52 percent using DSL. E-mail, research and travel/holiday bookings were given as the top reasons for using the internet. Online banking and online shopping were most popular for 25-49 year olds, with music downloading, social network sites and online games playing most popular for 15-24 year olds.

Source: Wireless News.

A report published yesterday by Ireland’s telecoms watchdog the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) shows that while former monopoly eircom may be losing ground in the internet access segment, it still controls a 78% share of the residential telephony market despite nine years of competition. The regulator’s ‘Consumer ICT Services Survey Q4 2007’ shows that eircom far and away outstripped its closest rival Perlico, the company recently acquired by Vodafone, which had 7% of the residential telephony market by subscribers, based on the survey conducted by Millward Brown IMS. Third place was taken by BT Ireland (5%), followed by TalkTalk/Tele2 (2%), Imagine Group (2%), ntl/UPC (1%), Magnet (1%), others (2%) and don’t knows (2%). The report also revealed that the percentage of homes in the Republic with a fixed line is falling: in 2000 more than four-fifths of households reported having a landline, but this figure has now dropped to around 68%. Over the same period, the proportion on people (15yrs-74yrs) owning a cellphone has climbed from 40% to 90%, with even higher rates of ownership for all adults under the age of 50. Pre-paid ownership accounted for 76% of users in 4Q07, down two percentage points in the year.

Belgium's second largest operator by customer numbers, Mobistar, has reported its Q4 07 results, which suggest that it finished the year strongly, adding a record 155k new connections in the final quarter of 2007. This takes its total customer base to 3.49m, with net additions of 337k in the year, up from 240k in 2006. On a proportionate basis, annual growth rose to 10.7% from 8.2% in 2006.

However, these headline figures do not tell the whole story. In fact, most of the growth in 2007, and particularly in Q4, was attributable to 'third party' MVNO customers. In terms of annual net additions, 193k - 57% of the total - were in the MVNO segment, while in Q4 the figures were 112k and 73%. If we strip out new connections to MVNOs, a very different picture emerges. In the retail segment, there were only 145k net additions in 2007, compared to 226k in 2006, while annual growth in this segment was down to 4.6% from 7.8% in 2006.

Belgacom, the incumbent and leading internet access provider in Belgium has decided to say good bye to dial-up. The operator will stop marketing the service from 31 January 2008.

With ADSL now available to 99.7% of the Belgian population and subscription prices continuing to fall there seem few reasons to stick with narrowband.  25% of the population will have a broadband subscription by the end of 2007.

Source: Point Topic.

France added nearly 2 million new mobile phone users in the fourth quarter of 2007, taking the total to 55.4 million (87.6% of the population), according to telecommunication regulator Arcep. MNOs had 50.7 million customers and around fifteen MVNOs had 4.88 percent combined market share at the end of the year. Of the total number of mobile phone subscribers, 53.3 million are in mainland France, where the penetration rate is 87.1 percent, and 2.1 million are in overseas territories (103.5%). Postpaid plans were used by 36.3 million consumers at the end of last year, compared to 19 million on prepaid. SMS traffic rose to 37 per month in the fourth quarter from 31.1 in the third. Communication time slipped to 33.4 billion minutes from 34.6 billion, respectively. ARPU rose to EUR 35.80 per month in the third quarter, compared to EUR 35.20 in the second. This compares to EUR 37 at the end of 2006. Mobile number portability rose to 321,800 numbers in the fourth quarter, up 21.6 percent on the preceding quarter.

Source: Wireless Federation, based on Arcep.

PARIS -(Dow Jones)- SFR, France's second-largest mobile-phone operator, Tuesday said it has signed up 250,000 subscribers in two months to contracts allowing them unlimited Internet use on their mobile phones.

About 52% of the subscriptions are new customers while the remaining 48% are SFR customers who have changed contract, the company said in a statement.

The number of clients significantly exceeds SFR's initial target of 100,000, the company said. SFR is 56%-owned by Vivendi while Vodafone Group  holds the remaining 44%.

Rival operator France Telecom's  chief executive said Jan. 11 that the company's Orange brand had sold about 70,000 of Apple's iPhone handsets at the end of 2007, having forecast sales of nearly 100,000.

The iPhone is different from other handsets, though, as operators don't subsidize its price.

Source: Cellular News.

Spain added 182,263 mobile phone subscriptions in November 2007, taking the toal to 49.58 million mobile lines, or 110.9 lines per 100 inhabitants, according to telecommunication regulator CMT. Of the subscribers, 50.7 percent (92,407) signed with Vodafone, 30.2 percent (55,043) chose Yoigo, 10.9 percent (19,867) went with Telefonica Movil’s Movistar, and 1.6 percent (2,916) chose MVNOs. Mobile number portability rose by 7 percent to 328,455 lines in November 2007 compared to November 2006. Telefonica added 18,269 ported numbers and Yoigo added 18,150. Orange had lost 21,945 net lines to portability, followed by Vodafone with 12,131, Euskaltel with 359 and the remainder of MVNOs lost 1,987.

Source: Wireless Federation base on CMT.

Although the 100% penetration level was reached in Q1 of this year, mobile growth has not slowed to any great extent and in fact, the third quarter saw more new connections than either of the earlier quarters, with 20.14m new connections, against 14.5m in the second and 16.3m in the first. Curiously, the 20m figure is almost exactly the same number as in both Q3 06 and Q3 05, when net additions totalled 20.4m and 20.2m respectively.

If the normal seasonal pattern is repeated in Q4, then the final period of the year should see something between 25-30m new connections, enough to take penetration up to 110%. This reflects the fact that it is now quite commonplace to have more than one mobile account - one for work and another for domestic use. Add to this a small but growing number of machine to machine SIMs and a steadily increasing number of datacards or 3G USB devices, remove inactives where appropriate and clearly, there is no immediate prospect of a cessation of growth.

The vast majority of Europe's mobile customers are contained within its eight largest markets – France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine and the UK. Together, these account for nearly 500m of the 700m total, or just over 70%. The largest of these is Germany, with a total of 89.15m at the end of the quarter, while the smallest is Poland which closed the period on exactly 40m mark.

However, there are marked differences in penetration levels across the eight and also, some notable differences in growth rate.

Italy remains by far the most heavily penetrated market, with a level of ownership equating to some 143% of its population, nearly 25ppts more than the second country on this list, Spain. Both are obviously popular holiday destinations, which, given the quarter in question, might inflate the numbers to a degree but thee is little evidence to support this - certainly, neither market has ever seen a fourth quarter slump of the kind that we see in some of the Balkan states.

Subscriber base - Q3 06 – Q3 07

Source : Wireless Federation, based on Bitkom release.

The Portuguese market added around 50,000 new broadband subscribers in the third quarter, for a total 1.57 million at the end of September. That’s up 16 percent form a year ago, according to figures from market regulator Anacom. ADSL represents 62 percent of total accesses, while cable was responsible for 37 percent. Around 49 percent of new broadband clients opted for services from alternative providers. Portugal Telecom however remained market leader with 43.9 percent of subscribers, followed by TV Cabo with 22.9 percent, Novis with 14.7 percent, Cabovisao with 10 percent and Oni with 0.6 percent. Broadband penetration at the end of Q3 stood at 14.8 percent.

The Romanian telecoms regulator ANRCTI says that the country’s mobile networks carried 9.7 billion minutes of traffic in the first half of 2007, up 24% from the second half of 2006. On average, Romanian users register one hour and 23 minutes of voice traffic each month and send 13 SMS text messages. The country’s fixed networks carried 3.9 billion minutes of traffic in the first half, down 8% compared to the previous semester. Alternative providers accounted for 1.23 billion minutes of traffic, up 5.3% on H2 2006.

Source: Telegeography, based on the ANRCTI's statement.

The number of mobile phones sold in Germany is expected to grow by 6 percent from 34.4 million in 2006 to 36.5 million during this year, according to the German federation for ICT and new media Bitkom. At the same time, mobile revenue will grow by 2 percent from EUR 4.1 billion in 2006 to EUR 4.2 billion this year, as the growing number of mobile customers offsets only partially the drop in mobile minute fees. The mobile penetration is expected to grow from 104 percent in 2006 to 109 percent at the end of this year. A recent survey executed by Forsa for Bitkom shows that Germans increasingly use or want to use mobile internet applications, with navigation mentioned by 36 percent followed by information about traffic jams by 31 percent. Both news and bus/train time tables were mentioned by 26 percent followed by weather news by 24 percent. The survey also found that around 20 percent of German mobile users will use mobile internet services by 2010.

Source: Wireless Federation.