According to research unveiled by industry association GSMA, the number of mobile connected devices in the world is set to grow 100 per cent from more than 6 billion today to 12 billion in 2020. This trend will provide a significant growth potential for the entire M2M ecosystem. Mobile operators are uniquely placed to work in partnership with other industries to enable this opportunity.

Source: Fitce

­The number of mobile subscriptions in the Middle East (see note) will cross the 250-million mark during 2012, reaching 271.27 million at end-2012 and rising to 352 million at end-2016, according to forecasts by Informa Telecoms & Media.

Additionally, the average mobile penetration rate for the Middle East will cross the 100% mark in 2012: It will rise from 97.72% at end-2011 to 107.09% at end-2012, exceeding the mobile penetration rate in North America (US/Canada) for the first time. (The mobile penetration rate in North America at end-2012 will be 102.77%.)

Iran will continue to be the biggest mobile market in the Middle East by subscriptions with 82.91 million subscriptions forecast for end-2011, rising to 122.13 million at end-2016. Saudi Arabia has the next biggest mobile market in the region by subscriptions, with a 50.8 million active mobile subscriptions forecast for end-2011, rising to 71.32 million at end-2016.

Source: Cellular News

Brazil ended the month of September with 227.4 million active mobile phones, a 1.49 percent increase compared with the 224 million handsets in operation in August, according to Anatel. During the month, 3.3 million new mobile subscribers were added in the country, and the penetration rate rose from 114.88 percent in August to 116.51 percent in September.

In the first nine months of the year, the mobile service recorded more than 24.4 million new subscribers, an increase of 12.03 percent in the year. Of all mobile phones in operation in the country, 185.6 million were prepaid (81.64%) and 41.7 million postpaid (18.36%). 3G services were used by nearly 34.5 million people, representing growth of 67.19 percent in the year. 3G mobile handsets reached 27.2 million, or 11.98 percent of the market, and 3G modems numbered 7.25 million. Vivo ended September with 67.03 million subscribers, followed by TIM Brasil with 59.20 million, Claro with 57.61 million, and Oi with 42.84 million.

Source: TelecomPaper

­The mobile subscribe base in Armenia has been reduced by 680,000 customers to 3.27 million, a member of the Committee regulating public service of Armenia Samvel Arabajyan has announced.

The change is a clarification of what constitutes an active subscriber on a network - and this has been tightened to a three month limit, after which if the SIM card is not being used, the account is deemed to be dormant. As a result of the changes, Vivacell subscribers' decreased by 450,000 to just over 2 million. Orange's subscriber base decreased by 230,000 to 520,000 customer

ArmenTel did not change its statistics, as it already used the 3-month limit for its calculations. It has around 750,000 customers.

Source: Cellular News

­For the first time, the semi-annual survey conducted by the USA wireless industry trade association, the CTIA shows the number of wireless subscriber connections (327.6 million) has surpassed the population (315.5 million) in the United States and its territories (Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands), putting wireless penetration rate in the USA at 103.9 percent.

The survey -- which tracks US wireless trends including subscribership, usage, revenue and investment from January 2011 to June 2011 -- also showed a 111% increase in wireless data traffic.

From June 2010-June 2011, the annual capital investment increased by 28 percent to $27.5 billion. Since 2001, wireless companies have reported a cumulative total investment of $223 billion. These figures do not include the billions CTIA members paid to the U.S. government for spectrum.

Wireless annual service revenue was $164.6 billion in the 12 months ending June 2011, up 6 percent from the same period in 2010.

"Clearly, we're using wireless more every day, and the consensus of experts is that demand will continue to skyrocket by more than 50 times within the next five years. These are the reasons why our members need more spectrum," said Steve Largent, President and CEO of CTIA. "By making underutilized or unused spectrum available for auction, carriers will continue to invest billions of dollars in their infrastructure, generate hundreds of billions of dollars in benefit to our economy and create up to a half a million new jobs while ensuring the U.S. maintains its position as the world's wireless leader."

The January 2011-June 2011 wireless survey results are:

• Wireless subscriber connections: 327.6 million; mid-year 2010: 300.5 million (9% increase).
• Wireless network data traffic: 341.2 billion megabytes; mid-year 2010: 161.5 billion megabytes (111% increase).
• Average local monthly wireless bill (includes voice and data service): $47.23; mid-year 2010: $47.47 (less than 1 percent decrease).
• Number of active smartphones and wireless-enabled PDAs: 95.8 million; mid-year 2010: 61.2 million (57% increase).
• Number of active data-capable devices: 278.3 million; mid-year 2010: 264.5 million (5% increase).
• Wireless-enabled tablets, laptops and modems: 15.2 million; mid-year 2010: 12.9 million (17% increase).
• Minutes of Use (MOU): 1.148 trillion; mid-year 2010: 1.138 trillion (1 % increase).
• SMS sent and received: 1.138 trillion; mid-year 2010: 982.9 billion (16 % increase).
• MMS sent and received: 28.2 billion; mid-year 2010: 32.1 billion.

Source: Cellular News

Source: TelecomPaper

Source: Telecom Paper

The Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) today released its Quarterly Report on the Irish telecommunications market for the period 1st April to 30th June 2011 (Q2).  

Total quarterly electronic communications revenues (€961 million) increased marginally on the previous quarter (+1.3%). Ireland is ranked 1st out of 20 countries for business calls, 54.8% cheaper than the average of the 20 countries benchmarked. Total voice traffic (fixed and mobile) declined by 0.7% to just over 4.45 billion voice minutes this quarter.

Broadband subscriptions increased only slightly this quarter (by 3,859). As narrowband subscriptions fell by a larger amount (by 6,495), total Internet subscriptions (1,662,471) declined very slightly this quarter. The fixed broadband per capita penetration rate reached 22.8%. The total broadband per capita penetration rate (including mobile broadband) was 35.5%. Consumer adoption of higher (advertised) broadband speeds continues, with 12.5% of all broadband subscriptions now in the >10Mbps category compared to 7.3% this time last year.

Mobile subscriptions (including mobile broadband) stood at 5,377,188, down from 5,412,551 in the previous quarter. This quarter experienced the highest number of mobile numbers ported (123,646) since the introduction in mobile number portability in 2003. It is estimated that approximately 75% of TV homes in Ireland received a digital TV service by September 2011.

The full report (ComReg document 11/66) is available on the ComReg website.

Source: ComReg

Source: TelecomPaper

Arcep is the telecom regulator in France which revealed that the number of SIM cards in use exceeds the population in the whole of France. As on end of June, there were 66 million SIM cards in use in the country, representing a 101.6% population penetration level while the annual growth reflected 6% over the past four quarters.

The number of flat rate accounts that include M2M and internet access cards sustained a rise of +7.2% over the previous years. The growth rate was a tad slower though, in view of the previous quarters that produced 8% to 9% growth over the last five quarters. On the other hand, the last six months has seen a 4.1% growth rate in prepaid cards as compared to Q2 2010 for the same period.

There were 5.9 million cards ending the last quarter with regard to the number of M2M (machine to machine) and 3G data only SIM cards being used, representing 8.9% of the total base, and fuelled by a rise by 260,000.

Powered by an increase of 190,000 customers, the residential market grew slightly during the quarter while the increase in the number of MVNO customers over the past three months has yet again, offset network operators’ losses.

Source: Wireless Federation

­The government of Niger has announced plans to issue 3G licenses via a statement on the state controlled television, reports Reuters.

"These licences can go to any operator who desires them," according to a statement on state TV overnight. "Operators already set up here and who have global licences also have a chance to acquire one."According to the Mobile World analysts the country has around 14.4 million mobile phone users, which represents a population penetration level of 23%. There are four mobile networks.

Source: Cellular News

­Econet Wireless' Burundi subsidiary has launched the country's first 3G network following a US$10 million network upgrade.

The service is being launched in two phases, the first phase will cover the capital city Bujumbura and the second phase will cover the other key provinces. Econet customers are being offered the services in three packages targeting mobile, domestic or business users.According to figures from the Mobile World analysts, Econet Wireless is estimated to have around 185,000 subscribers, and a market share of 11.7%. The country as a whole has a mobile population penetration level of less that 16%.

Burundi, a landlocked country in the Great Lakes region of Eastern Africa is one of the ten poorest countries in the world.

Source: Cellular News

­Afghanistan's government has announced plans to issue a tender for 3G and 4G licenses next month. There will be an auction of some sort for the new license, while the incumbent GSM operators will be able to then buy a similar license for the same fee offered by the new entrant.

Announcing the plans for the license tender, Eng Amirzai Sangin Minister of (MCIT) said: The growth and vitality of the telecommunications sector in Afghanistan is one of the most remarkable success stories of the recent past. Since 1382 (2003-2004), when the first two licenses were issued for GSM mobile services, mobile telephone subscribers have increased from zero to 17 million subscribers. More than US$1.6 billion has been invested in modern infrastructure, services now reaching over 80% of the population and sustaining over 100,000 jobs nationwide."

There are currently five licensed mobile networks in the country and according to figures from the Mobile World analysts, their market shares are: Roshan (28.5%); MTN (24.5%) ; Etisalat (24.3%); Afghan Wireless (22%) and Afghan Telecom (<1%)

The 3G/4G tender package will be available to all interested parties on 1 August 2011.

Source: Cellular News

­With a mobile services penetration rate of 65% at year-end 2010 that is expected to catapult to 93% by 2016, Senegal is one of the more advanced mobile markets in West Africa, with plenty of room for growth, according to Pyramid Research.

During the past few years, the number of mobile subscriptions in Senegal swelled by 56% to reach 8.3m at the end of 2010.

"From 2011-2016, Pyramid expects mobile revenue to increase at a CAGR of 4% to $1.1bn in 2016, mainly because of the rise in broadband penetration and increased pricing competition among the three mobile network operators," indicates Pyramid Research Associate Research Analyst Ronda Zelezny-Green."A third factor contributing to mobile growth is the entry of a fourth mobile operator at some point within the next year, further driving operator experimentation with more competitive pricing strategies, innovation in service offerings and development of existing network coverage," she adds. Pyramid projects mobile broadband subscriptions to grow at a CAGR of 7%, reaching almost 13.9m by 2016.

Source: Cellular News

Source: Telecom Paper

­Tigo Ghana lost nearly a million customers between February to June 2011, according to data from the National Communications Authority (NCA), as collected from the mobile networks.The data showed that Tigo's subscriber base dropped from 4.136 million in February to 3.223 million in June - a loss of 913,191 subscribers.

Rival network Mtn gained just under 600,000 new customers, taking them to 8.967 million subscribers, while Vodafone gained 544,880 subscribers to take its base to 3.426 million.Expresso the only CDMA network in the country also lost 6,631 subscribers to end the period with 220,920 customers.

Source: Cellular News

­Bakcell and Azercell are bracing up for receiving two 3G licenses respectively. It has been affirmed by Ali Abbasov, Azarbijan’s Communications and Information Technologies Ministry that in the coming couple of days, the aforementioned licenses will be awarded.

At the moment, Azerfon happens to be the only operator that boasts of a 3G license while the nation has been contending with regard to the failure to give out more licenses to other operators.

According to Abbasov, the mobile operators will be awarded corresponding license for providing 3G services in the coming days, weeks and months. On the other hand, a lot depends on the networks that face technical issues in rendering 3G services.

As per sources, there are three GSM networks in the country, in addition to one CDMA operator. There were more than 8.3 million subscribers in Azerbaijan as on March 2011, accounting for 99% penetration level in terms of population.

Source: Wireless Federation

China will hit the 1 billion mobile connections milestone in May 2012, according to the latest Wireless Intelligence forecasts. China is already the world's largest mobile market, surpassing 900 million connections last quarter, which means the country is forecast to add a further 100 million subscribers over the next 12 months, surpassing 1 billion during Q2 2012.

By the time the 1 billion milestone is reached we estimate that Chinese mobile penetration will stand at 74 percent, up from 67 percent in Q2 2011, suggesting that the market will still have plenty of room for future growth.

We expect the market shares of the three Chinese mobile operators to remain largely unchanged from today. Market-leader China Mobile will see its share slip slightly from 68 percent to 66 percent, while third-placed China Telecom will increase two percentage points to 14 percent. China Unicom - the second-largest player - will see its market share unchanged at 20 percent, according to our estimates.

The number of Chinese subscribers connected to 3G networks is expected to account for a quarter of the country's total at the 1 billion point, up from 18 percent in Q2 2011. All three operators are rolling-out different versions of 3G technology: TD-SCDMA at China Mobile; WCDMA at Unicom; and CDMA EV-DO Rev. A at China Telecom (both China Telecom's CDMA2000 1X and CDMA EV-DO Rev. A networks are classed as 3G). China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) reported that 714,000 3G towers have been built in the past year - 214,000 for China Mobile, 274,000 for Unicom and 226,000 for China Telecom.

The relatively slow migration to higher-speed networks in China to date reflects the fact that smartphone penetration is still low - but rising fast. Smartphones are thought to account for around 10 percent of China's total base, but the exact figure is hard to calculate due to the large number of 'grey market' smart devices in the market. China Mobile, for example, says it already has 5.6 million iPhone users on its network, even though the devices can only currently access the operator's 2G (GSM) network and the device is not retailed by the operator.

­Ethiopia's monopoly mobile network, Ethio Telecom says that it has registered a remarkable increase in the number of mobile subscribers over the past weeks, and has now exceeded 10 million subscribers.

The total customer base, including fixed line and internet subscribers now reaches 11.3 million.For comparison, according to figures from the Mobile World  the state owned monopoly had an estimated 3.85 million subscribers at the end of June 2010.

The company has also announced plans to revamp its tariffs and prepay card durations. The company said that the lower value voucher cards are being introduced to fulfill the expectations expressed by the network's customers while higher value voucher cards are introduced specially for data services.

France Telecom has a two-year contract to manage the network, which expires at the end of 2012.

Source: Cellular News

­Afghanistan based mobile network, Roshan says that it has become the  first mobile operator in Afghanistan to surpass five million active customers, up from 30,000 customers at the end of 2003 when the company first launched its services.

Roshan's network now reaches over 230 cities and towns across all 34 provinces in Afghanistan, covering over 60 percent of the population.

"Reaching this milestone demonstrates how far we have come towards reaching our goal of connecting people and bringing Afghanistan into the 21st century. In 2003, when we started operations, less than 100,000 people had access to a phone. Afghanistan was truly landlocked. Since then, Roshan has been proud to play a leading role in using mobile phone technology as a critical tool in driving socio-economic development of the country," said Karim Khoja, chief executive officer.

Khoja added, "Our vision is to ensure that within the next five years, every Afghan has access to a mobile phone and to serve as a catalyst for change, supporting Afghans as we build a brighter tomorrow for the country." Roshan's customer base has increased by more than 30 percent in the last year, with the addition of more than one million active customers since October 2010. Afghanistan remains among the fastest growing mobile phone markets in the world, with some 15 million total customers, representing a mobile penetration rate of 35%.

The Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (AKFED), part of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), is a major shareholder of Roshan and promotes private initiatives in building economically sound enterprises in the developing world. It is also owned in part by Monaco Telecom International (MTI) and TeliaSonera.

Source: Cellular News

­West and Central Africa represents one of the fastest-growing mobile communications market in sub-Saharan Africa. Over the past few years, the region has witnessed a dramatic increase in mobile subscriptions due mainly to the surge in mobile subscriptions in Nigeria. The low levels of mobile broadband penetration in the region indicate that there is room for growth.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan finds that the mobile communications markets in Nigeria, Cameroon and the Ivory Coast earned combined revenues of $8.6 billion in 2009 and estimates this to reach $12.6 billion in 2016. From approximately 92.6 million in 2009, mobile subscribers are expected to grow to 172.4 million in 2015.

Source: TeleGeography

Since its launch back in December 2008, North Korea's koryolink has been focusing on maximizing the size of its subscriber base. ­It's majority shareholder, Orascom Telecom said that in Q1 2011, koryolink has successfully reached and crossed the half million subscriber mark closing the quarter with an ending base of over 535,000 subscribers.

Throughout the first quarter, koryolink continued to focus its efforts on two main areas; boosting subscriber growth and maximizing foreign currency revenues. The company said that this was done using a three-pronged approach which involved offering innovative products and services to the market, maintaining a strong sales presence across major cities and expanding network coverage to cover a larger percentage of the Korean population.

In February 2011, koryolink introduced an innovative offering targeting all Korean customers called the "Euro Packs". The "Euro Packs" are basically recharge cards that subscribers can buy in Euros and in return, such scratch cards offer them free voice & VAS in the off-peak period. The main objective behind launching such an offering was to boost koryolink's Euro revenue. The "Euro Packs" sales trend has seen a steady increase since launch which proves the right compatibility and wide acceptance of the offering in the Korean market. In January 2011, and for the first time in the DPRK, koryolink offered MMS to its subscribers. This represented the latest addition to koryolink's VAS portfolio. The service was received positively from subscribers and continues to exhibit a healthy growth rate to date.

In its efforts to better serve existing subscribers and reach out to potential customers, koryolink has maintained a wide distribution network consisting of 18 shops inside the capital Pyongyang and 8 shops covering eight main cities in the DPRK through an agreement with KPTC. Through such distribution network koryolink provides a variety of services such as selling new lines, selling airtime, providing information to subscribers, etc. Koryolink's network currently consists of 341 base stations covering the capital Pyongyang, 14 main cities as well as 72 smaller cities. The network coverage also extends over 22 highways. As of the end of Q1 2011, koryolink's network covers 13.6% of the DPRK's territory and 92% of its population.

Source: Cellular News

­Pakistan's Telecommunication Authority (PTA) says that it has ordered the blocking of 3.5 million SIM cards that had not been  re-registered by their users with the mobile networks.

To cope with the order, the operators are being allowed to block accounts in batches of up to 875,000 SIM cards per week until they have blocked all the accounts that had not complied with an order to re-verify their ownership details with the networks.

Although identity is needed to buy a SIM card, the regulator ordered a re-verification process for all accounts after it said too many had wrong details or information that was out of date.The blocked SIM cards will however be able to make a call to a single number, 789 to verify the users details with the mobile networks and get their service restored.The 789 system is an automated real time verification system where a customer has to verify his details through NADRA's database by answering mandatory secret questions i.e. mother's name and place of birth so as to re-activate the SIM.

Users have one week from being blocked to re-verify their details, after which the SIM card will be completely disabled.

Source: Cellular News

­Russian mobile network operator, MegaFon has reported that its customer base shrank slightly during the first three months of this year to 57.12 million - a drop of 0.3% compared to the end of last year.However, consolidated revenue for the first quarter of 2011 grew by 18% to RUR 55.2 billion (US$1.97 billion), although net income for the first quarter of 2011 decreased by 1.9% to RUR 10.1 billion (US$360 million).

The company said that the drop in net profit was because the revenue growth was offset by the increase in depreciation expense related to the substantial increase in fixed assets put into use at the end of 2010.

Source: Cellular News

India's telecoms regulator, TRAI has reported that the number of telephone subscribers in India increased to 846.32 million at the end of March 2011 from 826.25 million at the end of February 2011, thereby registering a growth rate of 2.43%.

The share of Urban Subscriber has declined to 66.65% from 66.72% where as share of Rural Subscribers has increased from 33.28% to 33.35%. With this, the overall Tele-density in India reaches 70.89.The overall Urban teledensity has increased from 154.01 to 157.32 and Rural teledensity increased from 32.95 to 33.35.­The total wireless subscriber base increased from 791.38 million in February 2011 to 811.59 million at the end of March 2011, registering a growth of 2.55%. The share of Urban Subscriber has declined to 66.30% from 66.36% where as share of Rural Subscribers has increased from 33.64% to 33.70%. The overall wireless Tele-density in India reaches 67.98.

Wireless subscription in Urban Areas increased from 525.17 million in February 2011 to 538.05 million at the end of March 2011. Rural subscription increased from 266.21 million to 273.54 million. This shows higher growth in Rural Subscription (2.75%) than Urban Subscription (2.45%). The Urban wireless teledensity has increased from 146.72 to 150.06 and Rural teledensity increased from 31.90 to 32.75. Private operators hold 88.01% of the wireless market share where as BSNL and MTNL, two PSU operators hold only 11.99% market share.Mobile Number Portability requests has increased from 3.83 million subscribers at the end of February 2011 to 6.4 million subscribers at the end of March 2011.

Source: Cellular News

Source: TeleGeography

­Mobile subscriber numbers in Zimbabwe trebled from early 2009 to mid-2010, whereas fixed line subscriptions remained stagnant. With demand for voice services increasingly met, future growth is predicted to occur around mobile Internet and broadband provision. Both mobile operators and Internet access providers will benefit from this second wave of growth. However, increasing political instability in the run-up to elections expected to be held in 18 to 24 months and a business environment not always conducive to proper process are expected to have a negative impact on market prospects.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan finds that the Zimbabwean mobile communications market earned revenues of $372.2 million in 2009 and estimates these to reach $1,343.7 million in 2016. This represents a compound annual growth rate of 20.1 per cent, considerably lower than the phenomenal 40.6 per cent revenue growth experienced from 2008 to 2009. However, declining growth rates are expected when markets become increasingly saturated.

"Mobile operators are the largest contributors to telecommunications revenues in Zimbabwe," notes Frost & Sullivan ICT Industry Analyst Protea Hirschel. "As 3G networks expand, mobile operators compete more directly with Internet access providers. These, in turn, have entered the voice market, adding to competition."

Unfulfilled demand, initially for voice and increasingly for data services, is one of the main drivers of growth for mobile communications. Fixed lines are unlikely to meet this demand in Zimbabwe.

Source: TeleGeography

­South Africa's MTN Group has reported that its subscriber base rose by 4% over the first three months of 2011 to reach 147.27 million at the end of March.

The subscriber bases of the three regions continue to grow at marginally different rates although, when compared to December 2010, the subscriber contribution between the regions remains relatively unchanged.

South and East Africa (SEA) region contributed 22% (December 2010: 22%) of the Group`s total subscribers while West and Central Africa (WECA) and Middle East and North Africa (MENA) contributed 45% ( 46%) and 33% ( 32%), respectively.

The South African operation contributes 58% to the region`s subscribers, increasing by 1.9% to 19.2 million for the quarter. The growth was slower than expected as a result of higher prepaid disconnections due mainly to seasonality, although some distribution difficulties also contributed. Market share was marginally down following increased competition in the prepaid segment. Uganda increased its subscriber base by 6.9% to 6.9 million maintaining its leadership position in an increasingly competitive market.

The Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ) has completed compiling a register of all mobile phone users in the country, state-run newspaper The Herald writes. The confidential database was completed following the regulator’s order last year for all cellular network users to register their personal details or be disconnected in the interests of curbing criminal activity. The registration deadline was 28 February 2011.

The report says that by that date, state-owned cellco NetOne had registered 90% of its subscribers, whilst rival Telecel Zimbabwe had registered 80%, but market leader Econet Wireless only 60%. With Econet controlling over 60% of the wireless market, the reported figures give a combined average of around 70% registration, indicating that around 30% of the country’s approximately nine million activated mobile SIM cards will now be disconnected, leaving a market of an estimated 6.3 million subscribers, or roughly 54% of the population.

Source: TeleGeography

Telkomsel, Telekomunikasi Indonesia's mobile unit  has reported nearly 100 million subscribers by the end of the first quarter compared to 95 million at the end of 2010.
According to Chief Executive Sarwoto Atmosutarno, they are optimistic they can reach their target of 115 million subscribers by the end of this year.

Source: Wireless Federation

Portugal Telecom has announced that its subsidiary in East Timor, Timor Telecom (TT), has reached the 500,000 customer mark on its mobile network. The figure corresponds to around 50% of the country’s population. Since 2002 TT has invested around USD75 million in the modernisation of its network, as well as the launch of new services such as credit transfer and roaming, and the lowering of the cost of services including internet access, mobile voice and text messaging. At present the operator’s wireless network covers 86% of the population and coverage is expected to reach 92% by the end of the year. TT and its Portuguese parent have renewed their targets for 2012, which include achieving 95% mobile coverage, increasing the number of retail outlets by 20%, doubling internet download speeds to 1Mbps, and increasing internet penetration to 18%.

Source: TeleGeography

India ended February with 791.38 million mobile subscribers, growing by 2.62 percent from 771.18 million in January, according to figures from telecommunications regulator Trai. Bharti Airtel led the market with 158.99 million subscribers as the company added 3.20 million new customers in the month. Airtel was followed by Reliance with 132.18 million subscribers, up by 3.31 million new customers in the month, and Vodafone Essar was the third largest operator in terms of subscribers with 130.92 million customers. Essar gained 3.56 new subscribers.

BSNL ended February with 90.31 million subscribers as the company gained 1.49 million new customers and Tata Teleservices signed-up 1.60 million new subscribers in February to bring its total to 87.65 million. Idea Cellular ended February with 86.80 million subscribers as it added 2.51 million new customers in the month while Aircel/Dishnet added 1.67 million new customers in February to bring its customer base to 53.50 million. Uninor had 21.58 million subscribers in total after signing-up 1.27 million new customers and MTS India had 9.61 million customers as it gained 517,986 new subscribers in February. Videocon ended the month with 6.56 million subscribers as its gained 552,850 new customers, and MTNL grew its subscriber base by 22,532 new subscribers to reach a total of 5.45 million. Loop ended February with 3.08 million customers as it gained 17,161 new subscribers in the month. Stel had 2.69 million subscribers and signed up 177,685 new customers, while HFCL brought its customer base to 1.39 million with 103,647 new subscribers. Etisalat/Allianz ended February with 652,370 customers as it added 99,796 new subscribers to its base.

Source: Telecom Paper

Telecommunications regulator ARPT's head of communications, Faical Madjahed has stated that there were 32,780,165 mobile phone users in Algeria at the end of 2010, 50,341 more than a year earlier.

He stated that despite a rise in customers, the country's mobile penetration rate fell to 90.3% in 2010 from 91.68% in 2009.Orascom Telecom Algeria (Djezzy) increased its mobile customer base to 15.09 million, for a 46 percent market share, versus 14.62 million at the end of 2009.

Algerie Telecom's Mobilis service saw its customers shrink to 9.45 million from 10.08 million, for a 28.8 percent market share.Finally, Wataniya Telecom Algeria (Nedjma), increased its user base to 8.25 million at the end of 2010 (25.2% share) from 8.03 million a year earlier.

According to the ARPT, monopoly fixed phone operator Algerie Telecom had slightly over 3 million fixed phone customers at the end of February 2011, 2.54 million with land lines and 533,300 on WLL. Madjahed added that there were an estimated 830,000 ADSL subscribers in the country at the end of February, for an around 10 percent penetration rate.

Source: Wireless Federation

Moroccan mobile operator Inwi has announced that it has reached the landmark of five million customers since launching GSM services in February 2010, which it claims gives it a market share of 13.5%, after winning subscribers from more established GSM providers Maroc Telecom and Meditel by beating both rivals on price. Inwi, which focuses on offering simple, transparent tariffs, is part of Wana, which leads the Moroccan 3G mobile broadband and fixed-wireless telephony markets by subscribers.

Source: TeleGeography

Brazil closed out the month of February with 23.5 million registered 3G mobile devices, up 14.34% on the same time in 2010, according to data published by the regulator Anatel. Further, it said that in terms of overall mobile users, the country was home to more than 207.5 million SIMs at the same date – a cellular penetration rate of 106.9% – thanks to net gains of 2.43 million users in the month. Vivo had a 29.55% share of the mobile market at end-February, equivalent to 61.34 million accesses, down from 29.93% of users a year earlier.

Second-placed TIM Brasil ended February with a market share of 25.16% (up from 23.65%), while Telecom Americas (Claro) had 25.47% (25.50%). The country’s fourth largest player Telemar Norte Leste (Oi) saw its share shrink to 19.47% from 20.56% in February 2010.

Source: TeleGeography

The total number of mobile phones in Senegal reached 8.34 million at the end of 2010, thanks to net additions of 515,967 in the fourth quarter, according to data published by the regulator, the Agence de Regulation des Telecoms et Postes (ARTP). Orange Senegal added a net 390,000 new subscribers in the last quarter of 2010 for a total of 5.09 million, handing it a market share of around 61%. Second-placed Tigo Senegal’s base dipped to 2.36 million from 2.42 million (or 28.2% of the market), while third player Sudatel Telecom (Expresso) increased its users to 898,113 (10.8% share). The net gains from the incumbents pushed cellular penetration in the country to 68.55%, far eclipsing fixed line teledensity which stood at 2.81%, or 341,857 main lines in service, up from 278,788 at 31 December 2009. The total number of internet subscriptions was 86,964 at end-2010, up 27,219 on the end of 2009, of which 89.2% were on an ADSL connection.

Source: TeleGeography

Russia-based telecoms group Vimpelcom has announced revenues of USD10.5 billion for the twelve months ended 31 December 2010. This figure represents an increase of 20.8% on 2009. Net income for the same period was USD1.7 billion, a rise of 4.5% year-on-year, while adjusted OIBDA was up 15.4% to USD4.9 billion. CAPEX for FY10 was reported as USD2.2 billion, or 19.2% of revenues. Alongside improved economic conditions in its markets, Vimpelcom credits growth to its consolidation of Kyvistar in Ukraine; the long-running deal, which saw Telenor and Altimo merge their respective 56.5% and 43.5% stakes in Kyivstar into the Vimpelcom group was finally approved by Ukraine’s Antimonopoly Committee (AMCU) in October 2010.

Source: Telecom Paper

Fitch Ratings has announced that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) disclosure since December 2010 of the number of active wireless subscribers based on a visitor location register (VLR) provides a clearer view on subscriber market share and other key operating indicators such as average revenue per user (ARPU).

In particular, Fitch noted that the information diverges from the key data previously reported by revealing that market share for operators may have been distorted by the inclusion of non-active customers in the subscriber count. The data further revealed that the ARPUs of some telcos which have a lower active subscriber base are much higher than reported ARPUs figures.

The VLR is a point-in-time database of active subscribers in a particular cell site. The total VLR count for an operator represents the sum of all active users across all of its cell sites at any given point-in-time. As any one subscriber cannot be present in more than one VLR, this measure provides a more accurate representation of an operator’s total subscriber count.

MTC has revealed that it ended 2010 with a total 1.53 million active customers, an increase from 1.28 million compared to the previous year.

According to the company, revenues for the year were little changed due to the cuts in termination rates, while EBITDA improved to $785.8 million from $748 million in 2009.Capex increased from $260 million to $410 million, almost half of which went to 3G network roll-out. The 3G investment helped data revenues grow 50% over the year, to 7.6% of total revenues by September 2010. Capex was higher than net profit for the year and a record for the company since its start.

MTC added that it was opposed to the regulator’s latest policy to cap off-net retail voice prices, stating that this is unprecedented for a regulator to intervene on retail prices. However, the company is positive on the country’s new communications law, which should allow it to gain a technology and service-neutral licence.

Source: Wireless Federation

­Latin America will pass the milestone of 100% mobile penetration by the end of 1Q11, according to the latest figures from Informa Telecoms & Media. However, despite this figure, there are still 178 million people in the region without mobile services, which represents 30% of its population.

Brazil, the largest and most important mobile market in South America, had already passed the milestones of 100% penetration and 200 million subscriptions by the end of 2010. With 105% penetration at the end of December, Brazil is now the sixth-largest market globally with 206 million subscriptions and the seventh-largest by revenues.

"Passing 100% penetration is a huge milestone for the mobile industry, but it's important to note that it does not mean that everyone in Latin America has a mobile phone" ,says Daniele Tricarico, senior analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media."Our research finds mobile penetration rates of 120% and higher in some urban areas where users have multiple subscriptions, but in rural areas mobile penetration rates can fall to 60% or lower, partly due to a lack of network coverage. So, while the industry should celebrate breaking the 100% penetration barrier for the region as a whole, it should continue expanding coverage and innovating to make mobile services more accessible for all those who are not currently mobile subscribers."

Source: Light Reading

The fourth quarter of 2010 saw a net increase of 196 million mobile subscribers across the world, beating the previous record of just under 190 million new subscribers set in Q4 2007. It is typical to see a substantial uptick in subscriber growth during the final three months of a year, but the size of this figure provides a pleasant boost to the wireless industry, whose growth had been somewhat constrained by the global recession. In aggregate, mobile subscribers grew by almost 690 million globally in 2010, to over 5.3 billion.

India was one of the main drivers of the record quarterly increase; even by its outsized standards of growth, the final quarter of the year was exceptional. India's mobile operators added 63 million subscribers in the three-month period – a number which exceeds the total subscriber count in either France, Spain, or South Korea. China was once again the country with the second largest subscriber increase, but the number of mobile subscribers in India is rapidly catching up with China. While mobile subscribers in India grew by 42% in 2010, China's mobile base grew by just 14%, and there is now just a 90 million gap between the two countries.

The next highest ranked countries for subscriber growth in the fourth quarter were Brazil, Indonesia, The United Sates, Nigeria, and Egypt. While Asia and other rapidly developing economies continue to drive wireless subscriber growth, the end of 2010 also saw trend-beating growth in some mature markets – including Germany, France and Mexico. 'This was a stand-out quarter for the industry,' said TeleGeography’s Mark Gibson. 'While the overall growth rate is declining as more wireless markets edge closer to maturity, the increase of almost 200 million subscribers in one quarter suggests that plenty of exciting business development opportunities remain. We project that the number of global wireless subscribers will top seven billion at the end of 2014.'

Source: TeleGeography

­The number of telephone subscribers in India passed the 800 million mark at the end of January, the telecoms regulator, TRAI has announced. The total subscriber base - landline and mobile - increased to 806.13 Million at the end of January 2011 from 787.28 Million in December 2010, thereby registering a growth rate of 2.39%.The share of Urban Subscriber has declined to 66.79% from 67% where as share of Rural Subscribers has increased from 33% to 33.21%. With this, the overall teledensity in India reaches 67.67.

Subscription in Urban Areas grew from 527.50 million in December 2010 to 538.38 million at the end of January 2011. Rural subscription increased from 259.78 million to 267.74. The growth of Rural Subscription (3.07%) is higher than the Urban Subscription (2.06%). The overall Urban teledensity has increased from 147.88 to 150.67 and Rural teledensity increased from 31.18 to 32.11.

Wireless Segment (GSM, CDMA & FWP)

Total Wireless subscriber base increased from 752.19 Million in December 2010 to 771.18 Million at the end of January 2011 registering a growth of 2.52%. The share of Urban Subscriber has declined to 66.42% from 66.65% where as share of Rural Subscribers has increased from 33.35% to 33.58%. The overall wireless teledensity in India reached 64.74%.

Wireless subscription in Urban Areas increased from 501.30 million in December 2010 to 512.26 million at the end of January 2011. Rural subscription increased from 250.89 million to 258.93. This shows higher growth in Rural Subscription (3.20%) than Urban Subscription (2.19%). Private operators hold 87.78% of the wireless market share where as BSNL and MTNL, the two state-owned operators hold only 12.22% market share.

Source: Cellular News

­The number of 3G subscribers in China has passed the 50 million mark - three years after the networks first launched their commercial services. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) says that it expects the numbers to surge to 150 million by the end of this year.

According to statistics from China Mobile, it had a total of 22.6 million 3g users in January, while China Unicom had 15.47 million and China Telecom attracted 13.64 million.

"Now telecom carriers have a large number of subsidized 3G phones available to attract users", which will intensify the competition between China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, said Kevin Wang, research director of China operations at the US-based research company, iSuppli Corp told the China Daily newspaper.

For historic comparison, at the end of May 2010, the country had 20 million 3G subscribers, and 38.64 million by the end of October 2010.

Source: Cellular News

According to Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Egyptian mobile subscriber base grew to 66.87 million at the end of November 2010, from 65.5 million a month earlier.In November 2009, Egypt’s three mobile operators, Etisalat Egypt, Mobinil and Vodafone Egypt, had 53.68 million subscribers.

Source: Wireless Federation

­Canada will have 28 million mobile subscribers in 2012 with Bell Mobility's market share decreasing over the next two years, according to new market research report by IEMR. Given the latest quarter numbers, their model forecasts that Telus Mobility will be replacing Bell Mobility (excluding Virgin Mobile) as the second largest mobile operator in Canada after Rogers Wireless in 2012.

Pakistan ended 2010 with 102.78 million mobile subscribers, up from 101.641 million in November, according to figures from the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA). Mobilink led with 31.79 million subscribers, up from 31.54 million a month earlier, followed by Telenor which had 24.69 million customers, compared with 24.401 million customers in November.

Ufone had 20.28 million subscribers in December, up from 20.192 million, and Warid ended the month with 17.52 million versus 17.474 million a month earlier. Zong grew its customer base to 8.50 million from 8.028 million customers in the previous month. Total mobile teledensity stood at 61.7 percent compared with 61 percent in November.

Furthermore, the number of WLL subscribers stood at 2.76 million in December, down from 2.85 million in November. PTCL led in WLL customers with 1.32 million versus 1.30 million a month earlier, followed by Telecard with 710,942, WorldCall with 456,048 customers, and Wateen with 228,623 customers. Link Direct had 33,970 subscribers in November and NTC ended the month with 11,823 customers. WLL teledensity remained at 1.6 percent

Source: TelecomPaper

Moroccan mobile, fixed and broadband group Maroc Telecom’s consolidated subscriber base grew by 19% in 2010 to reach 26 million customers, the company announced today. With operations spread across Morocco, Mauritania, Gabon, Burkina Faso and Mali, revenues for the year grew by 4.3% to MAD31.7 billion (USD3.8 billion).

Operating income rose 2.3% to MAD14.3 billion, representing an operating margin of 45.3%, whilst group net profit increased by 1.2% to MAD9.5 billion. The operator added that it forecasts ‘moderate’ growth in revenues in 2011, with profitability levels expected to be ‘maintained’. Domestic revenues for 2010 totalled MAD26.2 billion, an annual increase of 1.7%, helping to drive a 1.0% operating profit increase to MAD13.2 billion, as the Moroccan mobile customer base grew by 10.6% to 16.9 million. 3G/3.5G mobile broadband internet subscribers more than tripled during the year to reach 549,000, overtaking the operator’s ADSL fixed broadband base.

Maroc Telecom’s other African subsidiaries had a total of 6.8 million mobile customers between them by end-2010, up 58% year-on-year.

Source: TeleGeography

Mobile operator Zain Iraq, a subsidiary of Kuwaiti telecoms group Zain, expects to sign up between 15,000 and 18,000 new cellular users a month after commencing services in Kurdistan, the firm’s chief executive, Emad Makiya, said in an interview with Reuters. According to the executive, initial operations began in Iraq's northern Kurdish region last October, although an official launch will take place in the first quarter of 2011.

Makiya said that total subscribers for 2011 are expected to increase by around one million from roughly twelve million users at 31 December 2010. In terms of revenue, Zain Iraq expects its 2010 turnover will be around 10% higher than 2009’s USD1.34 billion, whilst 2011 sales are expected to rise even higher: ‘The plan is to be 16%-17% above what we have done last year [2010] as far as the revenue [goes],’ Makiya said.

Priorities for 2011 include the launch of 3G services in Iraq (following regulatory approval), and the introduction of a pre-paid option for RIM’s BlackBerry handset. TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database states that Zain Iraq is the country’s largest mobile operator by subscribers, with a market share of 51.7% at 30 September 2010, followed by Asiacell (34.8%), Korek Telecom (11.2%) and SanaTel (2.3%).

Source: TeleGeography

Vodafone’s Irish mobile unit says that increasing popularity for smartphones and mobile broadband packages were behind its strong subscriber growth in the last three months of 2010. The company ended the year with around 2.217 million mobile users, thanks to 34,000 net additions in Q4, up from 2.145 million a year earlier. The company reported that almost one in two devices sold by Vodafone Ireland in December was a smartphone – predominantly Apple's iPhone and Google-based Android handsets. Including the operator’s fixed line and DSL businesses, the total subscriber figure rose to 2.4 million at the year end.

Vodafone said mobile quarterly minutes of use (MOU) per customer grew 5% year-on-year, to 273 minutes in 4Q10. In addition, the cellco said data traffic increased by around 5% in the fourth quarter, aided by the poor weather experienced in the country, which forced a large number of people to work from home during December. However, blended average revenue per user (ARPU) fell by 6.9% to EUR34.90 (USD41.8) a month.

The cellco also announced the launch of a new device designed to boost 3G signal coverage indoors. Vodafone’s ‘Sure Signal ‘device is a femtocell that uses a fixed line broadband connection to create a 3G signal for its network if there is none available, or boost weak signal. The device, which will go on sale in about two weeks, will cost less than EUR100.

Source: TeleGeography

The number of mobile subscribers in Kyrgyzstan increased by around 500,000 in 2010 to reach a total of 4.9 million at the end of the year, news agency 24.kg reports, citing figures from the Ministry of Transport and Communications (MoTC). At that date, wireless coverage stood at over 85% of the territory of Kyrgyzstan.

Meanwhile, the ministry said that investment in the country’s telecommunications sector totalled USD69.5 million in 2010, up 54.6% year-on-year. According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, the Kyrgyz mobile market is home to six operators: GSM firms Sky Mobile (Beeline), BiMoCom (Megacom) and Nur Telecom (O!); CDMA-based companies Aktel (Fonex) and SoTel (Nexi); and TDMA network operator Katel.

Source: TeleGeography

­Portugal Telecom has confirmed that its 40% owned subsidiary, CVMóvel had submitted a application for the awarding of a 3G mobile license in Cape Verde. CVMóvel, a wholly owned subsidiary of the CVTelecom Group, follows T+ and Cabo TLC de São Vicente, the other two companies that have submitted applications to ANAC, the telecoms regulator.

Mobile operator Zain Iraq, a subsidiary of Kuwaiti telecoms group Zain, expects to sign up between 15,000 and 18,000 new cellular users a month after commencing services in Kurdistan, the firm’s chief executive, Emad Makiya, said in an interview with Reuters.

According to the executive, initial operations began in Iraq's northern Kurdish region last October, although an official launch will take place in the first quarter of 2011. Makiya said that total subscribers for 2011 are expected to increase by around one million from roughly twelve million users at 31 December 2010. In terms of revenue, Zain Iraq expects its 2010 turnover will be around 10% higher than 2009’s USD1.34 billion, whilst 2011 sales are expected to rise even higher: ‘The plan is to be 16%-17% above what we have done last year [2010] as far as the revenue [goes],’ Makiya said.

Priorities for 2011 include the launch of 3G services in Iraq (following regulatory approval), and the introduction of a pre-paid option for RIM’s BlackBerry handset. TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database states that Zain Iraq is the country’s largest mobile operator by subscribers, with a market share of 51.7% at 30 September 2010, followed by Asiacell (34.8%), Korek Telecom (11.2%) and SanaTel (2.3%).

Source: TeleGeography

­A brief flurry of statistics was published by the French telecoms regulator without any commentary, but revealed that France had 64.4 million SIM cards in late December 2010. The annual growth rate was around 5% for three quarters, and the penetration rate is almost 100% at the end of 2010 (99.7% to be exact.

Worldwide mobile broadband-enabled subscriptions are mounting up, and will hit the one billion mark in 2011. According to the latest market data released by ABI Research, at the end of 2010 there were more than five billion mobile subscriptions globally, with one in five of those having access to mobile broadband. Another 28% growth or 6.6 billion wireless subscriptions is expected by 2016, with 40%, or twice the current percentage of users, being mobile broadband-enabled.

Despite many markets reaching saturation with penetration levels in excess of 100%, mobile network operators still have a lot more to look forward to. "With the proliferation of mobile broadband, it has become increasingly common to have multiple mobile connections per user," comments research associate Fei Feng Seet. "The main motivation is the desire to stay connected everywhere, with more high speed 4G wireless networks lighting up, and a huge increase in the popularity of social connectivity."

Chinese and Indian operators are now the top five mobile network operators measured by subscriptions, putting Verizon Wireless in the US into sixth place. As of the third quarter of 2010, China Mobile alone accounted for 11% of all global mobile subscriptions.

"China's and India's penetration levels are nowhere near the 100% mark, leaving much more room for growth than any other countries," notes ABI Research practice director Neil Strother. "However, the strictly regulated telecom markets in these two countries impose high barriers for foreign players, which may slow the rollout of new technology."

In terms of subscriptions, worldwide mobile penetration now stands above 75%, of which the Asia-Pacific region accounts for close to half.

Source: Cellular News

Orange Armenia chief executive officer Bruno Duthoit has told reporters that his company has now signed up 555,000 mobile subscribers, up from 306,000 at the end of September 2010. The CEO’s comments are quoted by PanArmenian.Net which adds that the cellco is now looking to increase in 3G network capacity by 30% this year.

Duthoit told a news conference that the capacity increase will hopefully redress recent issues experienced by subscribers to its mobile internet services. He confirmed that whilst some users may be having technical problems, on the whole, the network is performing satisfactorily.

Source: TeleGeography

According to data published by Associacao Brasileira de Telecomunicacoes (Telebrasil), the total number of fixed and mobile broadband accesses in the country reached 34.2 million lines at the end of last year, up 71% year-on-year. Put another way, around 14.2 million new connections were activated last year, Telebrasil reports, with customers signing up to one or more of the available access platforms on offer – i.e. fixed broadband (DSL, cable etc), or 3G mobile. Indeed, in the latter segment the association reported a massive 257% y-o-y rise in connections from four million to 14.6 million, while fixed connections increased from 11.4 million to 13.6 million.

Source: TeleGeography

Airtel Kenya, the country's second largest cellco by subscribers, has announced that it has added two million subscribers to its network since August 2010, effectively doubling its active subscriber base. The mobile operator credits the latest customer additions to the reduced tariffs that it introduced in August. As previously reported in CommsUpdate, in August 2010, the cellco, then known as Zain Kenya, cut end-user call charges from KES6 to KES3 across all networks for both pre-paid and post-paid customers. CEO Rene Meza told a press conference: 'With the drop in tariffs, we have seen an increase in volumes, both in users and in minutes'. Meza added that the average monthly minutes of use (MoU) had tripled since August.

Going forward, Meza announced that the cellco is poised to launch its long-awaited 3G network in March 2011, following a KES25 billion (USD296 million) rollout. 'The beginning of our data journey will start towards the end of this quarter', Meza said, adding that the operator also intends to double the number of 2G bases stations currently deployed across Kenya.

Source: TeleGeography

The total number of registered SIMs in Brazil reached 202.9 million at the end of last year, thanks to the net addition of 29 million phones over the twelve-month period. The net gain was the second largest annual increase ever reported by national regulator Anatel; a record 29.7 million new mobile phones were added in 2008. By 31 December 2010 cellular penetration in the country reached 104.7%, with pre-paid services accounting for the overwhelming majority of lines (167.1 million, or 82.3%) and contract customers the remainder (35.8 million, 17.7%). In addition, GSM continues to be the most popular technology, used by some 87.8% of mobile phones, although Anatel reported 20.6 million 3G connections by the year-end, an increase of 138.1% year-on-year.

Vivo Participacoes retained its leading position in the market as at 31 December, with a 29.70% share of subscriptions, compared with 30.14% in September. America Movil (Claro) was the second largest player with a 25.40% market share, down slightly from 25.47% three months earlier. Third place was taken by TIM Brasil with 25.10%, up from 24.52% previously, while fourth-placed Oi had 19.40% of the market, down from 19.51% in September.

Source: TeleGeography

The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) has recorded that mobile phone users in the country reached a total of 68.65 million at the end of December 2010, an annual increase of 31% according to the watchdog’s calculations. Market leader GrameenPhone added 6.7 million subscribers in the year to reach a total of just under 30 million; Orascom Telecom Bangladesh (Banglalink) ended 2010 in second place with 19.3 million customers after signing up a net 5.5 million in the year; third-ranked Axiata Bangladesh (Robi) was credited with over three million new additions to give it 12.4 million network SIMs at end-December. Airtel Bangladesh (formerly known as Warid) added just under one million new subscriptions for a total of nearly four million, whilst in fifth and sixth place, CDMA-based Pacific Bangladesh Telecom (Citycell) and state-run Teletalk had respective totals of 1.8 million and 1.2 million users at end-2010. According to TeleGeography's GlobalComms Database, the overall subscriber growth rate in the mobile sector beat 21.8% in 2009 and 28.5% in 2008, although was lower than 65.2% in 2007.

The database shows that over the last few years each operator’s subscriber take-up rate has fluctuated depending on their level of subsidisation of handsets/SIMs to cover a heavy SIM tax in the country; GrameenPhone for instance, saw a relative slump in its level of customer sign-ups during most of 2009 prompted by a low level of subsidisation but after reintroducing full subsidies its growth rate subsequently shot up again.

Source: TeleGeography

­The number of mobile phone subscribers in China exceeded 850 million last year, according to a Chinese government report. Net additions reached a record high of more than 100 million in 2010 alone, according to the report from the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The growth boosted the country mobile penetration rate to around 60 percent of the country's estimated population of 1.4 billion for 2010.

During the January-November period in 2010, 103 million users were newly subscribed to the country's mobile phone services. The figure is estimated to have surpassed 110 million as of the end of December.

The report showed the number of fixed-line subscribers dropped 153.9 million to 298 million during the period.

In the first 11 months of last year, the Chinese telecom industry's revenue was estimated to be 819.03 billion yuan (US$123.56 billion), up 6.6 percent on-year. Sales from mobile telecom business made up 70 percent of the industry's total business revenue, while fixed-line business accounted for about 30 percent.

Source: Cellular News

According to Armenia’s Minister of Transport and Communication, Manuk Vardanyan, the country was home to more than 2.77 million mobile users at the end of 2010, a cellular penetration rate of 86%. Cellular services are provided by the country’s three incumbent operators – ArmenTel, K-Telecom (VivaCell-MTS) and Orange Armenia – and have been bolstered in recent years by the introduction of 3G, he said. The minister added that 4G is currently being introduced throughout the country, and TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database notes that only last month, VivaCell-MTS launched its LTE network on a ‘test-commercial basis’. It plans a full commercial launch in February this year starting in Yerevan before expanding coverage to Armenia’s other regions. VivaCell-MTS paid AMD990 million (USD2.7 million) for a 4G concession in November 2010. Meanwhile, fellow operator Armentel is said to be in discussions with the Public Services Regulatory Commission of Armenia as it seeks to secure a 4G concession.

In a related story, Orange Armenia has revealed that its mobile subscriber base reached 500,000 at the end of last year. ‘The year of 2010 was important for the company, which launched full-fledged operations throughout Armenia,’ said Orange Armenia CEO Bruno Duthoit. ‘This year marked a lot of innovations, new offers, extension of the coverage, construction of the customer base and investments,’ he added. According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database the cellco, which is owned by France Telecom, had 45,000 mobile broadband customers at the end of September 2010, and its 3G network provided access to 93% of the population. In December 2010 it upgraded its national network with High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) and high definition (HD) voice services, employing the services of Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) to carry out the modernisation of the core and access network which will enable Orange to provide high quality voice calls and data speeds of up to 14.4Mbps in main cities.

Source: TeleGeography

The Egyptian ministry of telecoms has said the number of mobile subscribers in the country rose 23.6% to 65.5 million in October 2010, compared to the same period last year, Zawya Dow Jones has reported. Subscribers for Vodafone Egypt reached 29.4 million for the period, while subscribers for MobiNil reached 28.6 million and Etisalat Misr reached 7.5 million subscribers, the ministry said.

Source: Ameinfo.com

­The number of mobile phone subscribers in China exceeded 850 million last year, according to a Chinese government report. Net additions reached a record high of more than 100 million in 2010 alone, according to the report from the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The growth boosted the country mobile penetration rate to around 60 percent of the country's estimated population of 1.4 billion for 2010.

During the January-November period in 2010, 103 million users were newly subscribed to the country's mobile phone services. The figure is estimated to have surpassed 110 million as of the end of December.

The report showed the number of fixed-line subscribers dropped 153.9 million to 298 million during the period.

In the first 11 months of last year, the Chinese telecom industry's revenue was estimated to be 819.03 billion yuan (US$123.56 billion), up 6.6 percent on-year. Sales from mobile telecom business made up 70 percent of the industry's total business revenue, while fixed-line business accounted for about 30 percent.

Source: Cellular News

Millicom Rwanda, which provides mobile services under the Tigo banner, has widened its network footprint to a further ten districts, East African Business Week reports. Services are now available in Bugesera, Gatsibo, Gicumbi, Gisagara, Huye, Kamonyi, Nyaruguru, Rubavu, Rutsiro and Rwamagana. The operator has also enhanced coverage in areas already covered by its network, including Gasabo. Under the company’s mobile licence – awarded in November 2008 – Millicom is committed to covering at least 80% of the population by the end of the year. According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, Millicom became the country’s third mobile operator when it launched commercial services in November 2009. Just under a year later, at 30 September 2010 the company had signed up just over 548,000 customers, placing it second in the market behind MTN Rwanda with 2.39 million users, and just ahead of Rwandatel (535,710).

Source: TeleGeography

According to a report on the first half of 2010 by the Swedish Post and Telecom Agency (PTS), the volume of mobile outgoing call minutes overtook fixed minutes for the first time in the country during the period, with cellular calls accounting for 52% of the six-month total of 21.5 billion minutes, compared to 10% a decade ago.

Furthermore, one-third, or 1.5 million, of the approximately 4.5 million broadband internet subscriptions recorded by the PTS at mid-2010, was accounted for by mobile broadband services provided by cellular network operators. Elsewhere in the report, the number of fixed telephony subscriptions continued to fall to just over five million by the end of June 2010; of these around one million were based on IP telephony (VoIP). The regulator also said that IPTV subscribers reached 429,000 by mid-2010, out of a total of five million television subscriptions in the Swedish market overall.

Source: TeleGeography

Now for the first time Swedes are calling more from their mobiles than from fixed telephones according to a report by the Swedish Post and Telecom Agency (PTS). According to PTS's calculations, the crossing point between mobile and fixed telephony usage occurred in early May 2010.

In total, Swedes made calls for 11 billion minutes from mobile networks and 10.3 billion minutes from fixed networks during the first half-year of 2010. This means that 52 per cent of the outgoing traffic came from mobile networks."Ten years ago the mobile networks represented less than 10 per cent of all outgoing call traffic. This growth has been rapid, and we have not yet seen the end," says Mattias Viklund, Head of Accessibility and Market Analysis at PTS.

Continuing decrease in subscriptions for fixed telephony

Ten years ago there were about as many subscriptions for fixed and mobile telephony - approximately 6 million of each. Since then the number of subscriptions for fixed telephony has reduced to 5 million, while the number of mobile subscriptions has increased to 10.5 million.

One-third of broadband is mobile

There were 4.5 million broadband subscriptions on 30 June 2010. Of these, 3 million were subscriptions for fixed broadband and 1.5 million were subscriptions for mobile broadband. On 30 June 2010, 45 per cent of this broadband had a capacity of at least 10 Mbit per second downstream.

Methodology

The report is based on market statistics from telecom and Internet companies operating in Sweden. PTS sent the questionnaire for the report for the first half-year 2010 to in total 52 stakeholders.

Source: Cellular News

According to Moldova’s telecoms watchdog, the National Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communications and Information Technology (ANRCETI), the number of broadband subscribers totalled 244,000 at 30 September 2010. The figure represents an increase of 9.2% compared to 223,400 three months earlier, and a year-on-year rise of 48%. The regulator believes that the growth was driven by increased availability of high speed internet services, as well as lower tariffs and dial-up-to-broadband substitution.

Of the total broadband customer base at 30 September 2010, 159,400 were xDSL subscribers, while fibre-to-the-building (FTTB) and LAN customers accounted for 75,400 and cable broadband subscribers a further 7,500. In terms of subscribers, Moldtelecom leads the fixed broadband sector with a market share of 61.8% in 3Q10, followed by StarNet with 18.7%, Sun Communications (3.6%) and Orange Moldova (0.9%). Other operators accounted for the remaining 14.9% of the market’s broadband subscribers in the quarter ended 30 September 2010.

ANRCETI said that revenue in the fixed internet sector totalled MDL383.1 million (USD31.6 million), an increase of 22.6% from a year earlier, mainly due to higher volume of sales generated by StarNet, which saw turnover rise 94% year-on-year to over MDL55 million, and Moldtelecom, which witnessed a 19.5% increase to MDL258.9 million.

Source: TeleGeography

Three years after launching the first 3G W-CDMA/HSPA mobile network in the Ukraine, Ukrtelecom has announced that it has signed up ‘almost 600,000’ active 3G mobile users, approximately 500,000 of which are using mobile broadband internet services. Still the country’s sole UMTS network operator, due to an impasse in national licensing plans, the soon-to-be-privatised group had reported 485,000 mobile subscribers at end-June 2010.

Source: TeleGeography

Brazil's telecoms regulator has announced that there are now more mobile phones in the country in use than there are people.

The 100% penetration mark was reached in October when just under 3 million new subscriptions were recorded, bringing the total to 194,439250, and a teledensity of 100.44 lines per 100 inhabitants.

In October, 12 Brazilian states already had more than one cellphone per capita: Distrito Federal, Sao Paulo, Mato Grosso do Sul, Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Sul, Goias, Mato Grosso, Santa Catarina, Rondonia, Espírito Santo, Paraná and Pernambuco.

Of the total number of phones, 159.82 million (82.19%) are prepaid. The remaining 34.63 million (17.81%) are postpaid contract customers.

Some charts released by the regulator:

Operators by Market Share

Technology Breakdown

­ Source: Cellular News

­According to the General Statistics Office, Vietnam signed up 35.2 million new phone subscribers in the first ten months of this year, up 5.4% compared to the same period last year. The figure of mobile phone users reached 34.5 million, up 7.2% percent year on year and 771,900 fixed phone subscribers, a drop of 39.6%.

The new subscription raised the total number of mobile phone users in Vietnam to 144.4 million and fixed phone ones to 16.4 million at end-October, up 45.3% from a year ago, respectively. While, the Vietnam Post and Telecommunications Group (VNPT) had 83.8 million clients, rising 27.1% from a year ago, including 72.1 million mobile users.

By the end of October, Internet users nationwide reached 3.6 million, an increase of 20.7 percent year on year.

Source: Cellular News

­South Africa based MTN says that it ended September with 134.47 million subscribers across its international markets. This is a 4% increase for the quarter from 129.21 million subscribers recorded at 30 June 2010.

The South and East African region, which contributes 22% to the group's subscriber base, increased its subscribers by 4.9% to 30.1 million for the quarter mainly driven by growth in South Africa. South Africa which contributes 59% to the region's subscribers increased its base by, 3.9% to 17.77 million subscribers for the quarter ended 30 September 2010. This was driven by continued growth in the prepaid segment which added 616,000 subscribers.

Uganda increased its base by 5% to 6.22 million for the quarter as competition continued to intensify. The West and Central African region contributes 46% to the group's subscribers and increased its subscribers by 3.4% to 61.38 million. Nigeria, which contributes 60% to the region's subscribers, recorded a 5.1% increase in its subscriber base to 36.84 million.

Rwandan telecoms operator Rwandatel has announced that its mobile subscriber base has grown to 600,000 following the launch of a low-cost call tariff, local daily The New Times reports. According to telecoms regulator Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Agency (RURA), Rwandatel had registered 443,534 active subscribers in June this year.

Rwandatel's corporate communications manager, Cleophas Kabasiita, attributed the increase to the launch of a new tariff which offers on-net calls at RWF3 (USD0.005) per minute and attracted 156,466 subscribers in less than three months. ‘Our mobile subscribers have grown steadily and we have seen an upsurge with the introduction of each new product and/or service,' she noted. According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, the company launched GSM services in December 2008 and competes with South Africa’s MTN Rwanda and Luxembourg-based Millicom Rwanda (Tigo). Rwandatel is owned by Libyan government investment vehicle LAP Green Networks (80%) and the Social Security Fund of Rwanda (20%).

Source: TeleGeography

­Africell Sierra Leone (a subsidiary of Lintel Holding) announced that it has crossed the one million active subscriber mark. In November 2009, Africell acquired Tigo Sierra Leone (a Millicom group company) in a market consolidation move.

In the group CEO's own words, "the 1 million active subscribers in Sierra Leone is just a benchmark of a promising future with a mere 29% penetration rate and 55% population coverage".The country now has three mobile networks, with a fourth licensed but yet to launch. According to figures from the Mobile World, their respective market shares are: Zain (26.3%); Comium (15%); Africell (58.7%).

Source: Cellular News

TradeArabia News Service reports that Etisalat Nigeria has announced that it has signed up its five millionth subscriber, a remarkable achievement given it has been in operation less than two years. ‘We are very proud of Etisalat Nigeria, as it has made a significant achievement netting five million subscribers in less than two years of commercial operations in a highly competitive telecom market like Nigeria,’ said Ahmed bin Ali, Etisalat Group senior vice president. ‘This impressive increase attained in subscriber base attests to the yearning of Nigerians for a superior GSM service and demonstrates that customers are delighted with Etisalat’s world-class product offering and service delivery which is in line with the company’s practice in major markets Etisalat operates in,’ he noted. Since launch in November 2008 Etisalat Nigeria has rolled out a network with coverage of all the 36 states of the federation as well as the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.

Source: TeleGeography

Latin America's mobile broadband services market achieved a high growth rate during 2009, reaching a total of 15 million connections. This total represented nearly 3% of population penetration in the region last year. Due to its fast adoption and to the limited DSL and Cable Modem coverage in several countries, it is likely that mobile broadband penetration will overcome the fixed broadband penetration in the following years, in some markets such as Brazil and Colombia.

­Frost & Sullivan expects that by 2015, mobile broadband penetration will reach up to nearly 40% of the total population.Although mobile broadband network coverage has expanded in the last 2 years, the region still faces difficulties related to spectrum availability and allocation. Regarding 3G services, almost all mobile operators already offer them in the top 6 economies in the region. Although some operators have speed plans up to 1 Mbps, the average speed is still slow in Latin America, ranging between 128 Kbps and 256 Kbps.

Brazil reached the highest penetration of mobile broadband users in Latin America; however, the service price in the country is considered the highest amongst other countries analyzed, mostly due to its high tax burden. On the other hand, Chile has appeared as the most developed market with the broadest offer of plans and lowest prices for prepaid users."Investments in mobile broadband network coverage expansion, the increasing need for mobile connectivity, growth penetration of 3G enabled mobile devices, such as smartphones, tablets, ereaders, etc, and the lack of fixed broadband network coverage are the main drivers for the market in the next few years," explains Frost & Sullivan Industry Manager Jose Roberto Mavignier.

However, the strong base of prepaid users in Latin America, the elevated tax burden and the delay of regulators for important issues that interfere in the market development are among the main challenges for the continued growth of the market.

Source: Cellular News

­Costa Rica's telecommunications market offers opportunities with its new liberalization, opening the door for competition across all segments and boosting mobile penetration to 136 percent by 2015 with prepaid subscriptions, according to a new report from Pyramid Research.

Costa Rica is the last country in Latin America to liberalize its telecommunications industry. Now, the regulator in Costa Rica has been quite busy with the liberalization of fixed and mobile services taking place. "Costa Rica is auctioning three mobile licenses over the next few months, and the process is expected to be completed before year end," says Jose Magana, Senior Analyst at Pyramid Research. "New regulation includes number portability and infrastructure sharing."

Source: Cellular News

­With seven operators, the Vietnamese mobile market is one of the top five most competitive markets in this region. Vietnam's mobile connections grew 58% in 2009 and penetration reached 127%. However, recent operator comments suggests that 50% of these connections are inactive and as much 70% of the connections added in 2009 were multi-SIM users.

On the broadband front, the Vietnamese market has seen growth of over 60% in the past 4 years. A subscriber base of 2.1 million in 2008 gave the nation a household broadband penetration rate of 11.9&. The subscriber base is expected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 15.22% from 2004 to 2014 and is forecasted to reach 4.9 million by the end of 2014. While, the household broadband penetration is projected to reach 24.9% by the same period. Consumer broadband revenues are expected to grow at a CAGR of 15.11% from 193 million in 2008 to 449 million in 2014.

Source: Cellular News

4 carriers control of 90 percent of wireless market, government report finds.

A government report finds that mergers and acquisitions over the past decade have left just four big carriers in control of 90 percent of the wireless market, thus making it harder for small and regional companies to compete.

A study from the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, also found that despite the consolidation, consumers are benefiting from better wireless coverage and prices that are half what they were in 1999. The GAO report, released Thursday, comes as the Federal Communications Commission is ramping up oversight of the wireless industry. The report says the number of cell phone subscribers in the U.S. stood at 285 million at the end of 2009, up from 3.5 million in 1989.

Venezuelan telecoms regulator Conatel has reported that Venezuela ended the second quarter of 2010 with 29.2 million total mobile subscriptions, up by only around 100,000 from 29.1 million at mid-2009, in a market where mobile user accounts outnumber the population. In the fixed broadband sector, Conatel’s figures showed that subscribers increased by 44.4% year-on-year to 2.22 million at end-June 2010 from 1.54 million in 2Q09.

Source: TeleGeography

Armenian mobile operator VivaCell-MTS, a subsidiary of Russian powerhouse Mobile TeleSystems, reported having more than 2.1 million subscribers as at 30 June 2010, up 3.9% on the number recorded in the same period of 2009, PanArmenian.net reports the company’s press service as saying.

In 2010 the cellco has ramped up its portfolio of products and services in a bid to garner market share. Most recently, this month it improved its ‘MTS Connect Unlimited’ tariff plan, offering subscribers 5GB of high speed internet downloads per month, instead of the previous 1GB of data, for the same monthly cost of AMD8,800 (USD2.42). In addition, the cellco is providing an MTS Connect modem free of charge for users taking a one-year subscription.

Source: TeleGeography

In July, the number of subscribers of Ukrainian mobile operators rose by 1% or 0.56 million to 55.61 million. Ukrainian News has learned this from results of a research conducted by iKS-Consulting, a wording of which was made available for the agency.

The number of subscribers of GSM operators made up 53.86 million (96.9% of the market), subscribers of CDMA operators 1.249 million (2.3% of the market), others are subscribers of the UMTS operator Ukrtelecom, the largest telecommunication company. In particular, number of Kyivstar’s subscribers made up 22.12 million (39.8% of the subscriber base), MTS’s subscribers 17.71 million (31.9%), Astelit company 11.69 million (21%) and Ukrainian Radiosystems and Golden Telecom (Beeline brand) 2.34 million (4.2%).

In July, Beeline was the leader in growth of the subscriber base, experts from iKS-Consulting connects this growth with the popularity of the Vidpochyvai tariff plan among entrant to Ukraine tourists. As Ukrainian News earlier reported, in June, the number of subscribers of Ukrainian mobile-telephone operators rose by 0.3% or 0.14 million to 55.05 million.

Source: HiTech Expert

A greater portion of Chinese mobile subscribers are accessing the Internet via mobile devices than users in the U.S., according to a report from The Nielsen Company. Research conducted by the measurement firm also suggested more Chinese users download mobile applications and make use of mobile instant messaging services than their U.S. counterparts.

Although mobile devices are only just reaching widespread penetration in China, Nielsen found 38 percent of mobile subscribers there claim to access online content on a monthly basis, compared with just 27 percent of subscribers in the U.S. In addition, 20 percent of users in China claim to download mobile apps and 23 percent use mobile instant messaging products, compared with 18 percent and 16 percent of U.S. users, respectively.

China also surpassed the U.S. in terms of text message usage, with 86 percent of users there using SMS services compared with 64 percent of U.S. subscribers. Two areas in which the U.S. continues to outpace China in terms of adoption, however, are location-based services and e-mail.

Nielsen's research was based on face-to-face surveys with 4,946 consumers age 15 and up in 19 cities around China. The interviews were conducted in March 2010.

Source: Clickz.com

The Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (BTRC) has reported that the country’s total number of mobile subscriptions reached 59.98 million at the end of June 2010, up by 27% year-on-year. Telenor unit GrameenPhone continues to lead the field by a wide margin with 26.46 million subscribers at mid-2010, up from 21.16 million a year earlier, ahead of Orascom subsidiary Banglalink with 16.10 million (11.05 million), Malaysian-backed Axiata (Robi) with 11.10 million (9.39 million), Warid (soon to be rebranded by Indian parent Bharti Airtel) 3.17 million (2.58 million), sole CDMA mobile operator CityCell 1.99 million (1.97 million) and state-owned Teletalk 1.16 million (1.10 million). In recent quarters, the figures in some operator's reports have differed from those of the BTRC, particularly the parent group of Axiata, which has consistently posted higher totals than that attributed to it by the Bangladeshi regulator.

Source: TeleGeography

Gambian President Yahya Jammeh has praised the country’s first 3G cellular operator QCell, run by local entrepreneur Muhammed Jah, for expanding mobile users’ choice in the country as well as introducing cheap service rates. The president was speaking on Saturday at the official inauguration of QCell’s headquarters, marking a year since the GSM/W-CDMA operator’s network launch in July 2009. Also speaking at the ceremony, Gambia’s Minister of Information and Communication Infrastructure Alhagie Cham commended QCell for taking on a significant risk in entering an already competitive market; he noted that in one year of operations the cellco had signed up a subscriber base of around 100,000, as well as expanding its network coverage across the country and employing a staff of 300 Gambians, up from around 100 at launch.

QCell has carried out a number of firsts in the country, including introducing video calling services and wireless datacard services for 3G/EDGE mobile internet access, available to pre- and post-paid users. Its website claims that its voice tariffs for both on-net and off-net calls are Gambia’s cheapest. Qcell, which competes against Africell, Gamcel and Comium, also sells its own branded 3G handsets.

Source: TeleGeography

Broadband service provider rankings from TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database show only small changes in rankings of the ten largest broadband service providers over the past twelve months. However, they also reveal a growing chasm between the two largest broadband operators and the remaining providers.

Collectively, the ten largest broadband service providers gained 23.3 million subscribers in the twelve months from Q1 2009 to Q1 2010, ending March 2010 with 191 million total subscribers—39% of the world’s 492 million broadband customers. KT of South Korea, the world’s tenth largest broadband ISP, is the only new member of the top ten ranking, having displaced Telecom Italia, which is now the 11th largest broadband ISP globally.

Just two mammoth broadband service providers, China Telecom and China Unicom, accounted for 20% of global broadband subscribers. Both companies gained approximately nine million subscribers over the past year, equivalent to the entire broadband subscriber base of Verizon. "The gap between the top two operators and the world’s remaining broadband service providers will continue to grow rapidly," commented TeleGeography Research Director Tania Harvey. "Aside from the two Chinese companies, all of the top ten broadband ISPs operate in mature markets, with high levels of broadband penetration and rapidly slowing subscriber growth."

Source: TeleGeography

The total number of registered SIM cards in Brazil climbed to 185.1 million in June this year, up 1.42 million (or 0.8%) from May, according to data published by the national telecoms regulator Anatel. As at 30 June, Vivo Participacoes – the cellco whose ownership is being contested by its equal joint venture partners Telefonica of Spain and Portugal Telecom (PT) – maintained its leading position with a market share of 30.24%, down slightly from 30.25% in May. America Movil’s local unit Telecom Americas (Claro) was second with 25.33% of the market, down from 25.41% in May, and TIM Brasil was in third place with 24.00%, up from 23.84%. Telemar Norte Leste’s Oi unit recorded a share of 20.08%, down from 20.15% the previous month.

In a related but unconfirmed story, Reuters reports that PT could agree to sell its 50% stake in Vivo to Telefonica ‘within days’ after committing to buy into fourth-placed Oi. Spanish financial El Economista cites unnamed financial sources as saying a deal could take place. PT is understood to have signed a pre-agreement with Oi valid until the end of next week to buy a stake once it has sold its part in Brasilcel, the joint venture through which Telefonica and PT control Vivo. Reuters notes that El Economista did not state the size of the Oi stake or give further details of who had agreed to sell it.

Source: TeleGeography

The total number of ‘active’ mobile phone users in Hungary rose by 15,000 to 10.84 million last month, according to the National Telecommunications Authority (NHH). Meanwhile, ‘inactive lines (i.e. those from which a call has not been placed or received within three months) dipped by 16,000 to 11.87 million, it said. Of the total for active users, T-Mobile led the way with 44.68% of the market, ahead of Telenor (formerly Pannon) with 32.89% and Vodafone in third with 22.43%. In addition, the NHH noted that 5,349 people switched provider via mobile number portability (MNP) rules in June, taking the total for numbers ported to 337,800 since MNP was introduced on 1 May 2004.

Source: TeleGeography

Mobile operator Etisalat Nigeria has announced it has attracted four million active wireless customers since it launched commercial services in October 2008, local newspaper Daily Champion reports. The company has gradually expanded coverage of its GSM network, which is currently available in all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. CEO of Etisalat Nigeria, Steven Evans, noted: ‘We are glad to be able to make such a momentous announcement like this after less than two years of commercial operations in Nigeria's highly competitive environment, especially given our position as the fifth entrant into the dynamic Nigerian telecoms market.’ According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, Etisalat Nigeria is 40%-owned by UAE incumbent Etisalat, with 30% owned by UAE government investment vehicle Mubadala Development Company, and the remainder by Nigerian investors.

Source: TeleGeography

­Standardization, interoperability and growing competition from e-mail servers and services are accelerating the commoditization of wireless e-mail, according to Gartner. Vendors are responding by pursuing differentiation in the areas of collaboration, applications and the cloud.

Gartner predicts that worldwide wireless e-mail users will reach 1 billion by year-end 2014. Worldwide business wireless e-mail accounts were estimated at more than 80 million in early 2010, including large, midsize and small organizations, as well as individual professionals - corresponding to about 60 million active users.

Source: Cellular News

­The number of mobile internet subscribers in Hungary passed the one million mark at the end of May, the National Communications Authority (NHH) has reported in its monthly update. In total, 16,000 new mobile internet subscribers were added in May 2010. The regulator added that the number of active customers - those having used mobile Internet in the last three months - within the whole set of mobile Internet subscribers has increased from 773,000 to 786,000.

According to a report based on the cooperation of Hungary's three mobile carriers, after April's overall traffic of 1,131,000 GB, subscribers in May used their mobile devices for a total of 1,148,000 GB of uploads and downloads, translating to an average traffic of 1.46 GB per active customer - a figure that has not changed since the previous month.

Russian wireless powerhouse Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) has celebrated its eighth anniversary in Belarus, with its local unit signing up more than 4.56 million subscribers and boasting 4,400 base stations covering 97.23% of the territory. In addition, the owners note its Belarusian cellco has voice roaming on 408 networks in 170 countries and territories and GPRS-roaming on 289 guest networks in 127 countries and territories. The unit currently has 34% of its base activated for data transmission services, of which 11% (501,600) use it regularly. MTS Russia has invested USD679.5 million in its Belarusian stock since entering the country.

Source: TeleGeography

Sweden's retail market for electronic communications increased during 2009 by 2 percent to SEK 50.5 billion, according to a report by local telecommunications authority PTS. The average household generated SEK 563 per month in revenues for market stakeholders during 2009, which was SEK 1 less than during 2008. In 2009, revenues from mobile services increased by 9 percent to SEK 22.2 billion in Sweden. At the same time, the number of mobile subscriptions, including voice and data, increased by 7 percent to 11.6 million at the end of 2009. Subscriptions for mobile broadband represented the largest share of this increase. The number of these subscriptions increased by 50 percent year-on-year to 1.31 million. During 2009, more SMS were sent than the total number of calls made from fixed and mobile phones. In the same period, 16.3 billion SMS were sent from mobile telephones, corresponding to an annual increase of about 65 percent. The average customer sent 133 SMS per month. Traffic for mobile data services amounted to 27,800 TB, corresponding to an increase of 103 percent compared with 2008. Revenues from fixed call services declined by 6 percent to SEK 15.4 million.

At the end of 2009, there were 5.151 million fixed telephone subscriptions in Sweden, which is 4 percent less than in 2008. While the number of traditional fixed telephony (PSTN and ISDN) subscribers fell, fixed IP-based telephony subscriptions rose in 2009. The number of internet subscriptions amounted to 4.596 million at the end of 2009. Of these, 4.255 million were broadband subscriptions, which corresponds to an increase of 13 percent year-on-year. The number of fixed broadband subscriptions was 2.945 million at the end of 2009, which is in line with the figure recorded at the end of 2008.

Source: TelecomPaper

Mobile operator Zain Iraq is hoping to add a further two million wireless subscribers during this year to increase its customer base to 13 million by the end of 2010. An unnamed company official told Zawya Dow Jones that Zain is expanding its mobile network to the northern Kurdish governorates of Erbil, Dohuk and Suleimaniya. The official added that Zain will spend around USD900 million in 2010 on new projects and operating expenses. According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, Zain is Iraq’s largest cellco by subscribers with 10.07 million users at 31 March 2010 (a market share of 48.4%), followed by Asiacell with 7.74 million customers (37.2%), Korek Telecom with 2.49 million (12%) and regional operator SanaTel with 500,000 subscribers (2.4%).

Source: TeleGeography

The government of Tanzania is adamant that the deadline for registering SIM cards in the country is 30 June and warned yesterday that anyone failing to comply with the order will see their service cut off. Local newspaper The Citizen quotes the Communications, Science and Technology Minister Peter Msolla as saying that after the deadline, all new mobile SIM connections will be registered at the point of purchase. Tanzania launched its registration scheme in mid-2009 with a view to completing the process by 31 December, however the scheme was subsequently extended to 30 June 2010. The minister confirmed too that, some 10.2 million people had successfully registered their SIM cards by March.

According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, Tanzania was home to 16.592 million mobile subscribers by the end of March 2010, with the country's five cellcos collectively adding 328,820 net new subscribers in the first three months of this year. Market leader Vodacom claimed a market share of 35.3% at that date, while second-placed Zain had 30.4% of the pie. Third place operator Tigo commanded a further 24.6% of users, and Zantel Mobile — once the nation's fastest growing cellco — had 9.0%. Trailing far behind the big four, the mobile arm of fixed line operator TTCL had 0.7%.

Source: TeleGeography

A mobile network has been launched by France Telecom’s Orange in the North African country of Tunisia. The venture has been launched in co operation with Investec, a Tunisian subsidiary of the Mabrouk group and Orange holds 49% in the joint venture.

One billion dinars (around EUR500 million) will be invested by Orange Tunisia to set up the network and to launch the operations. Majority of Tunisia’s major cities is already covered by this network and it will be doubled by the end of the year.

According to Didier Lombard, Chairman of France Telecom, Orange is proud to associate itself with Marwan Mabrouk to build Tunisia’s first genuine convergent telecoms operator and together they are committed to a project that will transform the Tunisian telecommunications market, and which in turn will help the country on its way to joining the world’s most competitive economies.

A network of nine shops and 400 distribution outlets will benefit Orange Tunisia. Almost 1,500 people will be hired by the company by the end of this year.

Source: Wireless Federation

Data published by the Hungarian telecoms watchdog the National Communications Authority of Hungary (NHH) shows that the country was home to 11.883 million registered mobile contracts at the end of March, although the three incumbent operators failed to record much growth despite increases in January and February 210. The fall in demand in March this year was mirrored by a dramatic fall in the number of customers generating data traffic. As at 31 March 2010 T-Mobile controlled 43.09% of the total market, down from 43.10% in February, Vodafone's share dropped from 22.09% to 22.03%, while Pannon's market share increased from 34.81% to 34.88%.

Source: TeleGeography

The Minister of Communications and Informatisation for the Republic of Belarus, Nicolai Pantelei, is quoted as saying the country will be home to 1.8 million broadband internet subscribers by the end of this year, up from the 500,000 currently subscribed to national PTO Beltelcom’s network. The minister’s announcement comes in the wake of a statement from Andrey Kononov, the deputy head of Belarusian public corporation Gyprosvyaz, that broadband internet penetration in the country will top 34% in 2015, broken down as 38% in cities and 25% in rural areas. Online news journal e-Belarus.org goes on to say that the Belarusian authorities are targeting three million high speed internet connections by 31 December 2015, of which half will be using mobile broadband as their means of access. For its part, Beltelecom is targeting a minimum two million broadband internet subscribers by 2015, on top of which it believes it will have between 400,000-500,000 dial-up users – broadly the same as today.

Source: TeleGeography

­ETECSA, Cuba's state telecommunications company, is predicting that the number of wireless subscribers on the island will exceed 1 million by the end of this year. Cuba has invested some $150 million since 2003 to develop the island's cellular phone industry, ETECSA's vice president of mobile services, Maximo Lafuente, told the official Prensa Latina news agency."This year, ETECSA will make the necessary investments to end 2010 with 1 million subscribers," the executive said, adding that the projection for 2015 is that the number of wireless subscribers will climb to 2.4 million.Lafuente said that beginning June 1 cell phone users will enjoy significant cost savings on calls made between 11:00 p.m. and 6:59 a.m. A new "caller pays" system will also go into effect on that date, although cell phone users also will have the option of a collect-call service.

The executive also said that rates for national and international calls will fall by between 42 percent and 75 percent depending on the destination.He also added that activation costs for cell phones have fallen from an original price tag of $120 to a current cost of $43.Of the communist-ruled island's 169 municipalities, 23 are still without mobile phone coverage, in some cases because they are located in mountainous or swampy areas.Gen. Raul Castro's government in 2008 allowed cell phone service for ordinary Cubans, a luxury previously reserved for foreigners, companies and state agencies.

The lifting of that restriction was one of the first measures he adopted after formally succeeding ailing older brother Fidel in February 2008, along with others allowing the unrestricted sale of computers, DVD players and other consumer goods.

Since then, ETECSA has gradually reduced the cost of activating cell phone lines and the use of mobile phones among ordinary Cubans has visibly increased.

Source: Cellular News

The total number of mobile internet subscriptions in Hungary increased by 13,000 connections to 972,000 in March this year, of which the total number of ‘active’ mobile internet lines climbed 22,000 month-on-month to 760,000, according to data published by the National Telecommunications Authority (NHH), as reported by news agency MTI on Monday. T-Mobile’s local unit controlled 47.66% of total mobile internet subscriptions as at 31 March 2010, and 49.08% of active connections. Pannon claimed a total market share of 27.81%, and controlled 25.47% of the active mobile internet user base in the country. Meanwhile Vodafone Hungary had a total share of 24.53%, and 25.45% of active users.

Source: TeleGeography

Ukrtelecom, Ukraine’s sole UMTS-based 3G mobile network operator, had signed up a total of 432,200 subscribers to its W-CDMA/HSPA-based services by the end of January 2010, reports Interfax-Ukraine. The state-run firm launched the 3G network in November 2007 under the ‘Utel’ brand, and offers pre- and post-paid retail mobile broadband services as well as wholesale connections to other cellcos.

Source: TeleGeography

Data just released by the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) shows that the country was home to a total of 17.642 million fixed and mobile subscriptions at the end of 2009, up from 13.130 million a year earlier, a combined teledensity of 43% (32%, 2008). Of the total subscriptions recorded at end-2009 17.469 million were cellular connections to one of the country’s leading mobile operators. Market leader Vodacom attracted 1.475 million new users last year for a total of 6.883 million, while second-placed Zain (Celtel) signed up a net 1.048 million new users in the period for a total of 4.910 million. Zain, however, failed to reach its own stated goal of six million customers by the end of last year. Third place operator Tigo boosted its base to 4.178 million by the end of 2009, and Zantel Mobile — once the nation's fastest growing cellco — added roughly 300,000 net new customers during the period for a total of 1.378 million. Trailing far behind the big four, the mobile arm of fixed line operator TTCL added just 10,000 subscribers for a total of 115,681, and Benson Informatics Limited (BOL), which lost 300 subscribers in 2008, had 3,101 data-only subscribers, up 101 since the start of the year.

In the fixed line segment, TCRA reported 172,922 fixed lines in service as at 31 December 2009, up from 123,809 at the start of the year, but only marginally higher than the 163,269 counted at 31 December 2007. National PSTN operator Tanzania Telecommunications Company Ltd (TTCL) claimed the lion's share with 157,321 lines at end-2009 (its December 2008 figure was 116,265 after it disconnected a number of active lines), with Zanzibar Telecommunications' (Zantel's) fixed line division taking the remainder.

Source: TeleGeography

­The sub-Saharan Africa telecommunications market will be characterized by regulatory developments and continued investment in broadband infrastructure by various submarine and terrestrial cable operators, according to latest research by IDC, making 2010 a defining year for Africa's telecoms sector. The FIFA 2010 World Cup will be a watershed moment for African infrastructure, determining the robustness and relevance of submarine cable systems, terrestrial backhaul networks, metro networks, and more.

Research for 2009 showed that Africa's telecoms channel accounted for 3-4% of all mobile/portable units shipped. Governments will continue efforts toward higher penetration among citizens, particularly in rural areas, and are likely to see mobile phones as a way of saving money and communicating with citizens. Currently, African mobile penetration rates average 25-45% of the entire population, but the rate for the adult population, with which governments would be interacting, is roughly 70-80%.

As well, operators and vendors will be looking more closely at social networking, news portals, and other content to grow data revenue, which will entail providing relevant content in local languages. As the availability of low-cost devices is an important factor in the adoption of these offerings, telcos will become an increasingly important channel for notebook, netbook, and smartphone vendors.

Source: Cellular News

Brazilian mobile operator TIM Brasil plans to extend its 3G mobile network coverage to around 60% of the population by 2012, BNamericas quotes the company’s chief executive Luca Luciani as saying. In an interview, the CEO went on to say he expects the country’s overall telecoms market to expand by more than 5% per annum, in revenue terms, over the three-year period.

According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, TIM Brasil is controlled by European telecoms operator Telecom Italia and ended 2009 with 41.1 million subscribers, up 12.9% from the end of 2008, and representing a market share of 23.6%. Total net additions in the fourth quarter came to 4.7 million lines, or 20.2% of total market net additions. Average revenue per user (ARPU) was BRL27.0 in 4Q09, a growth of 1.7% when compared to the previous quarter. The cellco’s GSM network covered 94% of the country’s urban population, serving around 2,958 cities, as at 31 December 2009. As for data coverage, TIM provides GPRS technology to 100% of its footprint, while 77% is covered through EDGE technology, it said. In addition, TIM’s 3G coverage included more than 57 cities at the end of 2009 – reaching 30% of the urban population in Brazil.

Source: TeleGeography

Japanese mobile operators added 488,600 new subscribers in February to reach a total of 111.52 million mobile subscribers, figures from the Telecommunications Carrier Association (TCA) show. NTT Docomo led in subscriber additions in February as it added 148,300 new customers to bring its total to 55.69 million. Softbank Mobile gained 145,800 new subscribers during the month to reach a total of 21.99 million, while KDDI ended February with 31.57 million subscribers after adding 121,400 new customers. Emobile won 73,100 new customers and ended the month with 2.26 million customers in total. PHS provider Willcom shed 69,600 customers, which brings the company's total to 4.17 million. Willcom recently filed for bankruptcy and has begun a rehabilitation process.

Source: TelecomPaper

Angola had a relatively modest total of 303,000 fixed line telephone connections at the end of 2009, but representing significant growth from a figure of 218,000 at end-2008, according to the National Communication Institute (INACOM), which made its statistics available to the Angola Press Agency (ANGOP). Meanwhile, the mobile market in the country continued to grow steadily, with the number of subscriptions reaching 8.7 million at the end of December 2009, up from 6.8 million twelve months previously.

Source: TeleGeography

Etisalat Afghanistan has celebrated the addition of its three millionth subscriber, and by its own calculation now controls 24% of the market share. With network coverage of 27 provinces, the company claims to have invested USD300 million in the country to date. Kheyal Mohammed, head of the Afghan telecommunications and information technology committee, said: ‘The telecommunications sector of Afghanistan needed a strong player such as Etisalat. Etisalat Afghanistan has been worthy of our confidence. Etisalat has managed to accomplish in a short period of time what took other operators years to achieve. Now we see that the company’s network has reached approximately 90% of Afghanistan, despite the security issues and geographical conditions’. Without giving details Etisalat said its Afghani operation tripled revenues in 2009. According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Etisalat competes with Afghan Wireless Communications Company, MTN Afghanistan and Telecom Development Company Afghanistan (Roshan).

Source: TeleGeography

The total number of registered SIM cards in Brazil jumped 1.64 million to 175.6 million last month, the second largest January hike ever recorded, as the nation’s cellcos continue to slug it out for new customers. According to data published by the industry regulator Anatel, the 50/50 joint venture between Telefonica and Portugal Telecom, Vivo Participacoes, maintained its leading position at the end of January with a 29.87% market share, up from 29.75% in December. Second spot was claimed by Telecom Americas (Claro), the local subsidiary of Mexico's America Movil, with 25.52% share, unchanged on the previous month. Third place was taken by TIM Participacoes (TIM Brasil) with 23.63%, also the same as for December, and ahead on Telemar Norte Leste’s Oi with 20.61%, down from 20.73%.

Source: TeleGeography

Turkcell, Turkey’s largest mobile operator by subscribers, has announced that since launching its first 3G service on 30 July 2009 it has attracted over five million subscribers to the network. As reported by CommsUpdate on 30 July 2009, Turkcell deployed its 3G networks to all 81 Turkish provinces, covering over 60% of the population at launch. The network has since been expanded to cover 70% of the population.

Source: TeleGeography

Macedonia’s third mobile operator Mobilkom Macedonia (VIP), owned by Telekom Austria via its wireless arm mobilkom Austria, reported a 25.5% increase in net users last year, reaching a total of 303,700 by the year-end. The gains helped the cellco increase its market share from 10.7% at end-2008 to 15.9% a year later.

VIP posted FY2009 revenue of EUR6.4 million (USD8.6 million), up 70% year-on-year on the back of strong subscriber gains. EBITDA decreased from EUR3.9 million in 2008 to EUR2.2 million last year, Dnevnik reports.

Source: TeleGeography

Barcelona, 15 February 2010 — After reaching around 4.6 billion mobile cellular subscriptions by the end of 2009, ITU expects the number of mobile cellular subscriptions globally to reach five billion in 2010, driven by advanced services and handsets in developed countries and increased take-up of mobile health services and mobile banking in the developing world.

Rwanda’s telecom industry registered a healthy growth in 2009 with the number of mobile subscribers hitting  2.4 million, according to Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Agency (RURA). RURA said the growth was driven by Tigo’s entry which boosted the mobile space by some 123,897 active subscribers from 2 million subscribers towards the end of 2009. “With Tigo’s launch, we are yet to see a rapid increase in subscriber numbers,” Col. Diogene Mudenge, RURA’s Director General told Business Times. Statistics by RURA show that as of January 16, 2010 MTN Rwanda’s mobile subscribers had reached 1.8m, Rwandatel 487,250 and Tigo 123,897.  “Rwandatel had a slowdown after a rapid start in acquiring more subscribers but now they have picked up again,” Mudenge said. Mudenge also attributed the increase in the number of mobile subscribers to the introduction of new interesting promotions and other services by MTN Rwanda and Rwandatel.

Rwanda expects to hit six million subscribers by 2015. 
RURA, which is the national telecom regulator, says that they are pushing for cheaper handsets from the operators. “We are working with the three operators to have a combine arrangement which will see handsets reduced from Rwf8,000  to Rwf2,000,” Mudenge said. The regulator intends to make a contribution of 50 percent of the total cost of the handset while an operator contributes 30 percent and the end user 20 percent. “We are in negotiations with Rwanda Development Bank (BRD) to see if they can give loans to people who will buy these phones,” Mudenge explained.   He added that Rwanda is seeking to issue a fourth licence in the  near future.  

“The third operator has to first acquire about 300,000 subscribers then we can issue out the bidding process for another operator,” Mudenge said.With the three operators, competition for market share is set to increase, giving subscribers a wide rage of alternatives.

Source: The New Times

Nepal’s state-owned national fixed line and mobile operator Nepal Telecom (Nepal Doorsanchar Company Limited, or NT) is mulling an ambitious network expansion programme designed to raise overall teledensity in the country to 60% by 2014. A report in the Republica online journal quotes NT deputy managing director Anoopranjan Bhattarai as saying the firm hopes to reach its goal by investing heavily in its GSM and next generation network (NGN) infrastructure.

Undaunted, Bhattarai revealed that NT hopes to hit its target through an ‘aggressive marketing and assurance of service quality’ campaign. ‘If our expansion plan materialises, over 30 million people will be using the services of NT by 2014,’ he added. In real terms NT needs to add around 18 million new lines, including more than five million GSM connections. NT is also looking to install an Internet Protocol Code Division Multiple Access (IP CDMA) system which will have capacity for three million subscribers, and is looking to implement an early launch of CDMA2000 1xEvDO technology boasting maximum transfer speeds of 3Mbps. Its existing wireless networks are limited to around 155kbps.

Other plans afoot include the option of offering IPTV and video on demand (VoD) systems, Bhattarai said, while the firm is installing 550 VSAT terminals to expand its services in remote places.

Source: TeleGeography

Orange Armenia, the mobile start-up owned by France Telecom has passed the 200,000 subscriber mark less than three months after launching commercial services on 5 November 2009. The company previously hit the 100,000 subscriber mark in early December. Commenting on the latest development, Orange Armenia CEO Bruno Duthoit said ‘Our goal is to improve our services and offer new solutions. The results surpassed our expectations by 10%.’

According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, Orange launched cellular services in the Republic of Armenia promising to provide mobile users across the country with ‘the quality of service and innovative offers that have become the hallmark of Orange's reputation worldwide’. The launch of the country’s third mobile operator – the market was previously a duopoly of VivaCell-MTS and ArmenTel (Beeline) – had been eagerly anticipated since Orange was awarded its licence on 19 November 2008.

In its press release, the Paris-based firm said that despite the relatively high penetration rate in the country (83.8% at 30 September according to TeleGeography's GlobalComms Database), there is strong demand for its services. With a population of around 3.2 million people, including 1.1 million in the capital Yerevan, Armenia offers the FT group ‘significant growth potential’, it said. In order to get the service off the ground, Orange has invested around EUR100 million (USD148.5 million) in the land-locked country, and going forward it intends to provide the necessary expertise and investment to ensure the development of a ‘high-quality 2G and 3G+ network offering nationwide coverage’. It had population coverage of over 80%, including around 500 towns and villages, at launch.

Source: TeleGeography

Spain added 300,649 mobile lines in December, bringing the total number to 52.88 million, up by 4.6 percent over the same month of 2008, according to the monthly report by Spanish regulator CMT. Over the last three months, Orange won 32.91 percent of the total new additions, Yoigo 21.87 percent, Movistar 19 percent, while Vodafone won 14.88 percent and the MVNOs won 11.33 percent in the period. Mobile penetration reached 114.6 lines per 100 inhabitants, versus 110.2 in December 2008.

The M2M sector went up by 25.7 percent over the same period last year, to over 1.84 million lines. The growth of the M2M sector brings the total number of mobile lines to over 54.73 million. Spain ported a record 429,974 mobile phone numbers in December, up by 13.7 percent versus the same period last year. Yoigo, the MVNOs and Orange saw a positive balance in portability, while Movistar and Vodafone registered a negative balance. Yoigo won 33,933 users, the MVNOs added 13,422 users, and Orange won 17,543 ported customers. Movistar shed 28,241 users and Vodafone lost nearly 36,657 customers in the month. Spanish operators added 63,722 broadband users in December, reaching a total base of 9.74 million lines, up by 7.6 percent year-on-year and a penetration of over 21 lines per 100 inhabitants. The number of DSL lines rose by 53,476 connections or by 8.2 percent over the same period of 2008, reaching a total of 7.88 million lines at the end of December. Some 10,246 cable modem lines were added in the month, reaching a total of 1.86 million lines. The overall number of fixed lines rose by 13,224, to 19.85 million lines at the end of December 2009.

Fixed penetration reached 43 lines per 100 inhabitants, versus 43.9 in the year-earlier month. Around 136,322 fixed numbers were ported in December, up by 20.9 percent versus 112,775 fixed numbers ported in December 2008.

Source: TelecomPaper

Argentina’s national statistics bureau Indec has revealed that the country ended December 2009 with 50.4 million mobile lines in service, up 8.4% year-on-year, BNamericas reports. Wireless telephony traffic reached 4.74 billion calls in December, representing an increase of 24.7% compared to the same month in 2008.

Meanwhile, the number of fixed lines totalled 9.47 million at end-2009, up 1.1% compared to a year earlier, and public phones reached 142,800, a decrease of 8.5% year-on-year. Local fixed line traffic during December 2009 was up 11.9% year-on-year to 1.40 billion calls, while domestic long-distance calls increased 20.1% to 403 million. Indec reported that there were 26.3 million outgoing international long-distance calls, an increase of 27.8% year-on-year, for a total of 87.3 million minutes, up 12.7% compared to December 2008.

Source: TeleGeography

Argentina’s national statistics bureau Indec has revealed that the country ended December 2009 with 50.4 million mobile lines in service, up 8.4% year-on-year, BNamericas reports. Wireless telephony traffic reached 4.74 billion calls in December, representing an increase of 24.7% compared to the same month in 2008. Meanwhile, the number of fixed lines totalled 9.47 million at end-2009, up 1.1% compared to a year earlier, and public phones reached 142,800, a decrease of 8.5% year-on-year.

Local fixed line traffic during December 2009 was up 11.9% year-on-year to 1.40 billion calls, while domestic long-distance calls increased 20.1% to 403 million. Indec reported that there were 26.3 million outgoing international long-distance calls, an increase of 27.8% year-on-year, for a total of 87.3 million minutes, up 12.7% compared to December 2008.

Source: TeleGeography

The total number of registered SIM cards in Brazil reached 173.96 million at the end of 2009, up 23.3 million year-on-year, the regulator Anatel reports. The gains were driven it said, by increased promotional offers offering discounts and/or bundled airtime to lure new users. Cellular penetration reached 90.55% at the end of the year, it added.

At the start of this year, Brazil’s leading operator by subscribers was Vivo Participacoes, with a market share of 29.8%, followed by Telecom Americas (Claro) with 25.5%. Third place was claimed by Telecom Italia’s TIM Participacoes (TIM Brasil) unit, with 23.6%, while Telemar Norte Leste (Oi) had 20.7%.

Source: TeleGeography

Indian state-owned telco Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) has announced that it hopes to have attracted around one million 3G subscribers by the end of the current fiscal year, according to the Economic Times. Despite signing up just 35,000 3G subscribers at end-June 2009 having launched commercial services in February 2009 interest has climbed significantly, with SS Sirohi, BSNL’s principal general manager (Value Added Services), noting: ‘We have received good response and have about 700,000 3G users and by the end of this fiscal, we should have crossed a million.’

With the auction process for 3G spectrum in India still having yet to take place, BSNL and fellow state-owned telco Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) are the only two operators to have received frequencies, and are looking to take advantage of the head start. ‘We are present in 300 cities and towns, which will be increased to 760 over the next three to four months,’ Sirohi said, while also adding that BSNL is focusing on introducing a variety of Value Added Service (VAS) offerings to drive its 3G tariffs: ‘Apart from cheap calling rates, we are also offering cheap video calling, video streaming and full track download. We will soon offer videoconferencing and other interesting applications.’

Source: TeleGeography

­Bangladesh's Grameenphone has announced that it crossed the 23 million active subscriber mark last week, which indicated resurgence in subscriber growth for the Company.

Earlier in October this year the Company had announced 22 million subscribers with the acquisition of nearly a million new subscriptions in the third quarter of 2009, driven primarily by a startup price campaign, on the occasion of Eid festival during and after the Holy month of Ramadan.

This new additional million subscribers follows on the re-introduction of the subsidized BDT 150 start-up price, in November 2009.

Commenting on the resurgence and latest growth, Grameenphone CEO, Oddvar Hesjedal said that he was happy to see such a milestone closing for Grameenphone in 2009 with a subscriber base of 23 million. "As a company with now over 23 million subscriptions we are no doubt the preferred operator in the market," he said, "but this new addition of 1 million subscribers clearly demonstrates the stranglehold to growth of tele-penetration that the BDT 800 SIM tax has on the country because of the growth we see when the SIM tax is removed from the connection cost."

As of November 2009 there were 50.5 million mobile subscribers in the country and Grameenphone, with 23 million subscribers, holds 45.5 per cent of the market share.

Source: Cellular News

The director of communications and public relations at the Botswana Telecommunications Authority (BTA), Twoba Koontse, has revealed that over two million of the country’s pre-paid mobile subscribers have registered their phone numbers.

Pre-paid customers of Botswana’s three wireless operators – Mascom Wireless, Orange Botswana and BTC Mobile (beMOBILE) – were given until 31 December 2009 to register their SIM cards or face the disconnection of their service. From 1 January 2010 new pay-as-you-go SIMs will be activated only after electronic registration has taken place. Koontse added that the registration of numbers will help the country better plan and expand the telecoms industry, as well as help curb crime.

Source: TeleGeography

Vodafone Czech Republic (formerly Oskar) has signed up three million mobile subscribers, reaching the milestone shortly before the tenth anniversary of the firm’s operation in the domestic market. According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, the country's third operator Vodafone CR launched services in March 2000, then known as Cesky Mobile. It remains the smallest cellco but has enjoyed some success in its efforts to migrate users from pre-paid packages onto more lucrative contracts. In January 2006 Oskar's new parent Vodafone announced it planned to introduce 3G services before the end of the year, and also upgrade the network to high speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) technology. However in a surprising turnaround in July, it said it was putting its 3G plans on hold in the face of what it called 'excessive' rollout costs.

Source: TeleGeography

Bulgarian news agency BTA has reported that by 31 December 2009 approximately 1.8 million users had registered their pre-paid SIM cards.

According to a new provision in the law on electronic communications, adopted in late 2009, mobile phone companies had to register the name, address and EGN – Bulgaria’s equivalent of a social security number – of their customers, who were given about two weeks at the end of the year to comply with the new rules. BTA revealed that MobilTel registered 800,000 pre-paid SIM card users, followed closely by Globul with 789,000. Vivacom meanwhile registered 200,000 users. Subscribers who did not register their SIM card before the 31 December deadline have been blocked from making outgoing calls (except for calls to the 112 emergency services number), although a grace period until 31 January 2010 means that they will continue to receive incoming calls and texts. If a customer fails to register by the end of January, the number and card will be terminated.

Source: TeleGeography

The executive president of Venezuelan mobile operator Digitel says he expects the company to reach 300,000 3G subscribers by March this year, up from 100,000 at end-2009, reports BNamericas quoting local press. Alberto Sosa also revealed that Digitel expects to end 2010 with 8.5 million GSM/3G subscribers, up from approximately seven million at present, following investment of USD400 million over the last three years. Digitel plans to expand 3G coverage to regions such as Valle de Caracas this year, whilst it has so far deployed at least 300 HSDPA base stations operating in the 900MHz band. The 3G/3.5G network covers over 100 towns/cities in 20 states, according to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database.

Source: TeleGeography

Belarusian Telecommunications Network (BeST), which trades under the banner life:), signed up its one millionth user on 28 December 2009, and reported a fourfold increase in customers over the year to give it around 11% of the overall market by the start of 2010. e-belarus.org also notes that the operator has amassed more than 100,000 3G users to its network in the first few months of operations. According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, on 3 November 2009, life:) launched the country’s first 3G network offering high speed internet connectivity at downlink speeds of up to 7.2Mbps and providing new services such as videocalling. The operator, which is 80%-owned by Turkish telecoms company Turkcell, with the remaining 20% in the hands of the Republic of Belarus, said that its 3G/3.5G network was available to residents in the capital Minsk and other major cities at launch.

Going forward, life:) plans to capture a 70% share of the Belarusian 3G market, or around 350,000 users, and to double its overall user base to two million. To help achieve this goal the cellco has commissioned 1,100 cell sites where currently 2,500 base stations are deployed and plans to extend cell site coverage to 1,900 locations covering all significant roads in the Republic in 2010. At the start of this year the life:) network covered 99.2% of the population and 85.3% of Belarusian territory; in 2010 it plans to achieve 99.8% and 93.0% respectively.

Source: TeleGeography

Mobilkom Austria claims it saw the largest customer growth in the Austrian mobile market during 2009, adding 300,000 new customers to reach more than 4.8 million total.

The operator's number of mobile broadband customers increased year-on-year by more than one third to 540,000. In March 2009, Mobilkom Austria launched an HSPA+ network, which enables users to reach download speeds of up to 21 Mbps.

Source: TelecomPaper

Saudi Arabia operator Mobily announced it had one million mobile broadband subscribers.

The one million connect users represent customers subscribed to any of Mobily's three high-volume mobile broadband bundles: the 1 GB bundle for SAR 100 a month, the 5 GB bundle for SAR 200 a month and the unlimited bundle for SAR 350 a month. Mobile broadband service, based on HSPA, is available in 80 percent of all populated areas of the Kingdom to any Mobily customer using a device that supports HSPA technology, whether that be a USB modem or handset. Mobily launched the three high-volume bundles commercially on 19 May 2007.

By the end of that year, Mobily had 73,000 mobile broadband subscribers. Registering 264 percent growth Mobily closed 2008 with 266,000 mobile broadband subscribers in its three high-volume bundles, prompting the GSM World Association to describe Mobily as having the busiest mobile date network on the face of the planet. Monthly traffic, upload and downloaded by customers, has grown more than 10 times since December 2007 to date, and stood at over 50 TB for December 2009. In June 2009 Mobily reported an active mobile broadband subscriber base of 600,000 customers. Three months later, when Mobily announced its third quarter financials, the company announced it had 800,000 customers.

Source: TelecomPaper

Armenian mobile start-up Orange Armenia, part of the France Telecom (Orange) group, has announced the signing of its 100,000th customer, barely a month after launching services in the country on 5 November. In a statement, the company said it would welcome Ejmiatsin resident Veronika Arustamyan, who bought the 100,000th SIM card, to its head office on 9 December.

According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, Orange launched cellular services in the Republic of Armenia promising to provide mobile users across the country with ‘the quality of service and innovative offers that have become the hallmark of Orange's reputation worldwide’. The launch of the country’s third mobile operator – the market is currently a duopoly of VivaCell-MTS and ArmenTel (Beeline) – has been eagerly anticipated since Orange was awarded its licence on 19 November 2008. In its press release, the Paris-based firm said that despite the relatively high penetration rate in the country (83.8% at 30 September according to TeleGeography's GlobalComms Database), there is strong demand for its services. With a population of around 3.2 million people, including 1.1 million in the capital Yerevan, Armenia offers the FT group ‘significant growth potential’, it said. In order to get the service off the ground, Orange has invested around EUR100 million (USD148.5 million) in the land-locked country, and going forward it intends to provide the necessary expertise and investment to ensure the development of a ‘high-quality 2G and 3G+ network offering nationwide coverage’. It had population coverage of over 80%, including around 500 towns and villages, at launch.

Source: TeleGeography

The number of Saudi Arabia's mobile phone subscriptions topped 41 million at the end of the third quarter, according to the country's Communications and Information Technology Commission. This compares to a mobile penetration of 162 percent. The quarterly growth is caused by increased competition between the three mobile operators in a country that has a growing population of 25 million. While subscriptions numbers have increased Mobily was the only one of the three providers to record a rise in net profit for the third quarter, posting a higher than expected SAR 807 million. STC's profits declined by 20 per cent to SAR 2.4 billion while Zain Saudi Arabia posted a 26.3 percent increase of its net loss. Broadband subscriptions rose to almost 2 million at the end of the third quarter, up from 1.3 million in 2008, the data showed. Fixed lines stood at 4.17 million with a penetration rate of 68 percent, almost unchanged compared to 2008 which the commission blamed on strong demand for mobile services.

Source: TelecomPaper

Saudi Arabia’s Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) has announced that the number of mobile phone subscriptions reached 41.1 million at the end of September 2009, up from 33.6 million a year earlier. As mobile penetration exceeded 160%, the regulator revealed that over 85% of all subscriptions were to pre-paid deals, allowing consumers to own multiple SIMs and patronise whichever of the country’s three operators represents the best deal at any given time.

Meanwhile the broadband market continues to develop, with 1.98 million customers at the end of September 2009, 1.24 million of which were contracted to DSL-based services, while the remainder were subscribed to WiMAX and HSPA networks. The CITC estimated that 31 out of 100 households across the kingdom had access to broadband services at the same date. Fixed line subscription remained stable in the nine months ended 30 September 2009, with 4.1 million accesses in service and teledensity at 16.3%.

Source: TeleGeography

The number of cell phones in this nation of more than 192 million people reached 169.8 million last month, the Brazilian National Telecommunications Agency, or Anatel, said Thursday.Some 1.7 million people acquired cell phones in Brazil in November, marking a 1 percent rise in sales compared to October, Anatel said.

The biggest subscriber growth - 29.6 percent - was registered by Vivo, a joint venture between Spain's Telefonica and Portugal Telecom.Claro, which is controlled by Telmex, ranked second, reporting growth of 25.4 percent, followed by TIM, a unit of Telecom Italia, with 23.8 percent.

Source: Cellular News

­Tele2 is to buy a majority share of Kazakhstan based mobile operator Neo (the trading name for Mobile Telecom-Service). The company is paying around SEK 550 million (US$77 million) for 51 percent of the shares and commit to a capital injection of around SEK 360 million (US$50.6 million) once the transaction has been finalized. The seller is Kazakhstan's dominant landline operator, KazakhTelecom who also owns a 49% stake in GSM Kazakhstan (Kcell), which is a far larger mobile network operator, in terms of subscriber base.

Neo is the smallest of the country's three GSM networks, and estimates from the Mobile World put its subscriber base at just under 1.5 million at the end of Q3 '09. This represented a market share of 9.2%. The two other operators are Kazakhstan-Rumeli Telecom, controlled by Russia's Vimpelcom and GSM Kazakhstan (Kcell), which is controlled by TeliaSonera's Fintur Holding.

Spain added 143,603 mobile lines in October, bringing the total number to 52.43 million, up by 3.8 percent over the same month of 2008, according to the monthly report by Spanish regulator CMT.

Over the last three months, MVNOs won 53.78 percent of the total new additions, Movistar 44.17 percent, Yoigo 25.02 percent and Orange won 0.30 percent, while Vodafone lost 23.27 percent in the period. Mobile penetration reached 113.6 lines per 100 inhabitants, versus 109.5 in October 2008. The M2M sector went up by 24.0 percent over the same period last year, to over 1.78 million lines. The growth of the M2M sector brings the total number of mobile lines to over 54.21 million. Some 397,118 mobile phone numbers were ported in October, up by 17.4 percent versus the same period last year. Yoigo, the MVNOs, Orange and Movistar saw a positive balance in portability, while Vodafone registered a negative balance. Yoigo won 22,044 users, the MVNOs added 8,411 users, Orange won 12,348 ported customers, while Movistar added 6,019 users. Vodafone lost 50,214 customers in the month. Spanish operators added a record 79,917 broadband users in October, reaching a total base of 9.60 million lines, up by 8.0 percent year-on-year and a penetration of over 20.8 lines per 100 inhabitants. The number of DSL lines rose by 64,885 connections or by 8.8 percent over the same period of 2008, reaching a total of 7.75 million lines at the end of October. Some 15,032 cable modem lines were added in the month, reaching a total of 1.84 million lines. The overall number of fixed lines dropped by 9,070, to 19.83 million lines at the end of October.

Fixed penetration reached 43 lines per 100 inhabitants, versus 44.1 in the year-earlier month. Over 133,307 fixed numbers were ported in October, up by 25.1 percent versus 106,548 fixed numbers ported in October 2008.

Source: TelecomPaper

­The state-owned telecoms network in Burma/Myanmar is to expand its CDMA network capacity by some 150,000 lines in the two main cities of Yangon and Mandalay this month, reports the Chinese Xhinua news agency.

Significantly, the capacity of the restricted network in the new capital city, Naypyidaw is not being affected. Phone services in the capital are even more tightly regulated than usual for other areas in the military run country.

The number of CDMA phone lines stood 205,500, while that of GSM phones hit 375,800 and auto-phones reached 153,344 in the country in 2008, according to statistics.

The Mobile World analysts estimates that the country had nearly 540,000 subscribers, representing a population penetration level of just 1.2%.

The 3G phones were selling for 2.8 million Kyat (US$ 2150), while a GSM costs about 2.3 million Kyat (US$ 1800). A CDMA costs about 2.1 million Kyat (US$ 1615). The prices put the phones out of reach of ordinary citizens and limits them to the government or favoured business contacts.

Government and military contacts tend to find it easier to get the paperwork to own a mobile phone - but often then rent out those phones to business users.

Source: Cellular News

Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies (MCIT) has issued a licence to provide third generation wireless services to mobile operator Azerfon, APA-Economics reports, citing Azerfon’s general director Gido Helbich. Azerfon, which operates under the Nar Mobile banner, has already deployed a 3G network across the country and plans to initially launch services in the 2100MHz frequency range in Baku, Absheron and other regions of the country. All mobile operators are expected to receive licences from the MCIT in due course, each for the price of AZN11,000 (USD13,600). A separate report by the same news source states that the country’s two other GSM operators, Azercell and Bakcell, have not received their licences as they have not yet submitted the relevant documents detailing the operators’ 3G network rollout progress and coverage, among other things. According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, Azercell was the country’s largest cellco by subscribers at 30 September 2009 with a customer base of around 3.69 million, followed by Bakcell with an estimated 1.59 million and Azerfon with 1.45 million.

Source: TeleGeography

­The Libyan government has announced plans to sell small stakes in the country's two mobile phone networks as part of a wider plan to sell off state owned corporations. The IPOs will offer shares in the government's two mobile telephone operators, al Madar and Libyana, as well as in Iron and Steel Company and National Commercial Bank.

The government also announced details of tax breaks to make trading on the local stock exchange more appealing to investors.

"The trading volume remains small because we are still at the start, but I expect that with new regulations ... the Libyan stock market will become one of the most active in North Africa and the Arab region," Seleem Naas, chairman of Libyan brokerage Sarab Foreign Exchange and Financial Services told the Reuters news agency.

Earlier this year, Etisalat said it had submitted a bid for Libya's third mobile phone license, although nothing further has been heard.

According to figures from the Mobile World, Libyana is the dominant operator with 83% of the market, followed by Al Madar. The country has a population penetration level of 134%.

Source: Cellular News

­Mobile phone penetration levels in Chile has passed the 100% mark, according to information released by Undersecretary of Telecommunications Pablo Bello. There are now 16.6 million registered phone accounts in the country.

Chile is the third country to reach saturation in Latin America.

Bello added that further competition between Chile's three biggest providers - Movistar, Entel and Claro - will keep prices low for consumers. Prices are set to fall over the next five years as part of a pricing regime agreed earlier this year with the regulator.

"The intense competition we now see between providers will continue to keep the costs low for users," he said. "The providers will also extend their coverage and develop better service standards as they fight for a bigger market share."

Based on figures from the Mobile World analysts, the market shares of the three main operators at the end of June were: Movistar (43.7%), Entel (36.6%) and Claro (19.6%).

Land line subscribers have fallen to just over 2.3 million lines.

Source: Cellular News

­Pakistan based mobile network operator, Mobilink has reported that its subscriber base grew by 900,000 net additions in Q3 2009 to reach just over 30 million. The customer base was down 4.2% year on year, as a result of the subscriber base clean-up undertaken throughout 2008 and early 2009, but has been growing throughout Q2 and Q3 09.

According to its internal reporting, Mobilink's market share increased from 40.62% in Q2 2009 to 40.70% by the end of Q3. According to Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, Mobilink's market share in Q3 was 30.9%. This market share is based on information disclosed by other operators which use different subscriber recognition polices.

Revenues during the quarter rose by 15.7% to US$934.6 million.

At the end of Q3, several changes in the tax structure were implemented as approved by the government. These include reduction in the federal excise duty (FED) on mobile usage from 21% to 19.5% and reduction in new SIM activation tax from PKR 500 to PKR 250. The new taxes were applicable from 1st July, 2009.

For the sales channels multiple retailer engagement activities were executed throughout the year including retailer promotion, franchise competition and sales blitz activities. Keeping in mind the vast geography of Pakistan, Mobilink introduced the concept of Jazz service points (JSP) to increase its reach to the remotest villages and towns. In addition to providing easy access to basic products and services, these service points also help in the up-selling of existing services.

During 2009, Mobilink continued its network expansion with investment of US$128 million till end of Q3. This Capex has enhanced the network's infrastructure, quality and coverage. Total cell sites stand at 8,025 till end of Q3.

Source: Cellular News

The number of mobile broadband users has doubled to 419,000 on 30 June of this year, according to a report from the Danish regulator IT and Telecom agency.

The report also shows that mobile data usage has grown from 1.3 billion MB in H1 2008 to 3.5 billion MB in H1 2009. This represents a growth of just over 160 percent in one year. In addition, 876,000 Danes used their phones for internet services. At the same time, the number of internet subscriptions via fixed broadband access rose 24,000 or a little more than 1 percent in the first half including 16,000 FTTH connections, 2,000 cable connections and 3,000 FTTO connections. On 30 June 2009, the number of fixed broadband connections amounted to 2.05 million. At the end of June 27 percent of all internet subscriptions via broadband access had declared downstream speeds of at least 10 Mbps growing from 10 percent in H1 2008 and the number of broadband subscriptions with less than 4 Mbps decreased from 45 percent to 23 percent during the same period. Other findings include that the number of of Danes subscribing to bundled services, with two or more services – telephony, TV and/or internet – bundled together, grew to 303,000 at the end of June, up 86 percent.

At the same time, the number of triple play subscribers grew almost 80 percent to 110,000.

Source: TelecomPaper

­Spanish operators have blocked some three million prepay SIM cards from making or receiving phone calls pending their owners registering their ownership details. Users of the unregistered SIMs will get an automatic message played when trying to make a phone call instructing them to visit a local retailer.

The operators were due to completely cut off the phones, but a last minute agreement by Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, gives the SIM card owners up to six months to register their ownership before the lines go dead - and losing any prepay credit they may contain.

The government considered a law to require all mobile phone users to register their ownership details with the network operators following the Madrid terrorist attack, which involved the use of anonymous SIM cards. The current legislation came into effect in 2007.

Earlier this year, the Interior Ministry launched a media campaign to remind mobile phone users to register their details.

According to statistics from the Mobile World analysts, the country had 54 million mobile phone subscribers at the end of June - representing a population penetration level of 133%.

Source: Cellular News

­The number of worldwide mobile subscribers will reach 5.9 billion by 2013, reports Infonetics Research. The firm notes that there were nearly 4 times more mobile subscribers than access line subscribers worldwide in 2008 (3.9 billion vs. 1 billion). In addition, the number of mobile subscribers grew 17.4% in 2008 over 2007, while access line subscribers declined 5.5%.

The global recession did not prevent people from using communication services, but it clearly accelerated the pace of wireline-to-mobile substitution. China, which had half a billion mobile subscribers in 2008, and India together make Asia Pacific the world's largest mobile subscriber region, now and into the future. The EMEA region is next, with strong growth driven by Africa. Mobile subscriptions will continue to grow strongly over at least the next five years, driven mainly by basic voice service needs in these regions, particularly in BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China)," projects Stéphane Téral, Infonetics Research's principal analyst for mobile and FMC infrastructure.

Access lines are disappearing fastest in North America and China, due to the move to fixed-to-mobile substitutions, the switch from copper to fiber lines, and the recession, during which many people ditch their landlines and keep only their mobile or smartphone.

The number of PON FTTH subscribers worldwide is expected to soar at a compound annual growth rate of 32% from 2008 to 2013.

Source: Cellular News

­The UAE based Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company (trading as du) has reported a 51% rise in its subscriber base over the past year to 3.14 million customers at the end of Q3 2009.

Revenues for the quarter were AED1.33 billion (US$362 million) consistent with the previous quarter and up 25.8% vs Q3 2008. EBITDA was AED297.3 million (US$81 million), representing an increase of 22.8% vs Q2 09, and 192.9% vs Q3 08.

Revenue performance across the fixed and mobile segments was positive with mobile providing the largest gains with increased subscriber numbers. Revenue growth was seen across all business segments, with the exception of the wholesale which was highlighted in Q2 09 as being exceptional.

Net profit (before royalty) was AED157.1 million (US$42.8 million) for the quarter a 398% outperformance vs Q3 08 and up 36% vs Q2 09.

Commenting on the results, Ahmad Bin Byat, Chairman of du, said, "In a challenging economic environment, du continues to focus on its core business objectives, our customers, by providing continual upgrades to our network infrastructure and product range in order to bring continued customer satisfaction on all interactions with the company. Both profit and subscriber number growth is a clear indication that we have a robust business strategy".

During the third quarter du's pre and post paid mobile subscriber numbers saw continued growth with the addition of 25,900 post-paid mobile subscribers, representing a 55% increase in subscriber additions over the second quarter as a result of continued marketing strategy to increase market share. Post-paid customers represent 3.6% of du's mobile business. Pre-paid mobile subscribers also increased with an additional 207,300 subscribers added for the quarter.

du's ongoing capital expenditure (CAPEX) programme is on track to exceed AED 2 billion (US$545 million) in 2009, with AED 424 million accounted for during Q3 2009 bringing year to date expenditure to AED 1466.7 million. du expects to continue with its CAPEX programme and expects to commit an additional AED 2 billion during 2010.

Source: Cellular News

­Bangladesh based mobile network operator, Grameenphone (GP) says that it added almost 1 million new subscriptions in the third quarter of 2009, pushing the total subscription base near to 22 million. However, GP crossed 22 million subscription base mark on 1st October.

Grameenphone CEO Oddvar Hesjedal, expressed his satisfaction with the subscription growth posted for the third quarter, "the market has just crossed the 50 million subscription mark and GP serves the largest share of that market (44%) among the operators. It pleases me that we have been successful in adding a significant amount of the new subscriptions to the market in the last quarter, which indicates that Grameenphone is the preferred service provider."

Average revenue per user (ARPU) increased by 6% compared to same period of last year mainly as a result of a raised tariff floor.

"A rising ARPU is a good indicator for both the industry and a sign of slow economic recovery," said the Grameenphone CEO. "However, reduction or removal of the BDT 800 SIM tax will help the economy recover sooner because internet and telecommunication penetration generates faster economic activity and community development," he added.

EBITDA margin has also improved to 57% compared to the same period of last year of 48.9% due to higher revenue, combined with lower network operation and maintenance costs. Capital expenditure was also lower during this quarter, in accordance with the current traffic demand.

Following the formal approval for Grameenphone's initial public offering (IPO), trading of the Grameenphone shares at the Chittagong and Dhaka stock exchanges is anticipated to commence in November. This is subject to approval from the regulators and stock exchanges.

Source: Cellular News

Mobile broadband connections will exceed fixed-line broadband connections in 2011, according to a report to be released by mobileSQUARED later this week. ­By 2011 the number of active 3G devices in the UK will be 36.3 million, as well as 6.4 million dongles/embedded devices, taking the total number of mobile broadband connections to 42.7 million versus expected broadband internet users of 42.5 million.

While the analyst house predicts internet usage over the mobile phone will remain below traditional fixed-line usage during the forecast period of 2009-2014, the company's research has revealed that between 1-10% of a company's internet traffic is already being generated from a mobile device.

"Mobile will become the primary access point for brands and businesses communicating with its consumers within two years," said Nick Lane, chief analyst at mobileSQUARED, and author of the report. "Mobile is always-on, and the average user carries their device for an average of 16 hours a day. So if a company or brand is not already considering how to use mobile, then they need to because their customers are."

However, not all of the 3G broadband connections in 2011 will be used for surfing by UK consumers. The report forecasts the number of mobile internet users in the UK will top 32 million by 2014 (equating to 90% of 3G broadband subscribers), but believes the 32 million figure could be reached faster with clearer data pricing from UK operators as well as the introduction of variable data pricing.

"Data pricing in the UK is still confusing," adds Lane. "Mobile operators and high-street retailers produce monthly magazines dedicated to handsets and tariffs, how can that not be confusing to the consumer? The number of mobile internet users would expand even faster if mobile data pricing reflected existing models, such as variable pricing to appeal to the different demographics. The cash-poor, time-rich youth democratic cannot afford the flat-rata plans, so why not offer a data pricing concession to encourage adoption?"

During the forecast period 2009-2014, mobileSQUARED predicts mobile content and services revenues (including apps) in the UK will almost treble from revenues of £242.1 million in 2009. Similarly, the analyst house forecasts that revenue from the core internet-based mobile advertising models of banners and links, search and tenancy, will be worth £83.7 million in 2014.

To find out how to attend the Roadshow and receive a complimentary copy of the Taking Internet Mobile: UK report visit www.mobilesquaredroadshow.com

Source: Cellular News

Vodafone Qatar has revealed that since launching services in July it has signed up 100,000 customers, 50% of which have taken post-paid plans. The company’s GSM network covers 99% of the population and provides competition to Qatar Telecom (Qtel).

Vodafone says it is confident of achieving a 40%-60% market share within ten years. At the end of June 2009 Qtel boasted 1.9 million subscribers.

Source: Telegeography

Orascom Telecom has reported that its mobile subscribers in North Korea nearly doubled in Q2�Œ09 even though the ARPU dipped. Koryolink, in which Orascom owns a majority stake, ended June with 47,863 subscribers, twice more than what the operator had at April-end, when the total stood at 19,208, said Orascom.

Koryolink runs on a 3G WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) technology and is the only operator in the country open to individual subscribers.

During Q2 2009, the operator posted an ARPU of US$22.80, down from $24.70 in Q1�Œ09. While EBITDA stood at $2.5 million.

Source: Wireless News

Pakistan’s mobile market according to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has reported a penetration level of 58.5% at the end of July. The mobile segment, in July added 1 million mobile suscribers taking the total mobile subscriber base to 95.55 million.

Of the total base, Mobilink led the market with 29.5 million (31%) subscribers while Telenor stood second with 21.3 million (22%) followed by Ufone with 21% market share.
The highest monthly additions were achieved by Mobilink with 414,000 new subscribers followed by Telenor and Warid with 406,000 and 255,000 new subscribers respectively.

Source: Wireless News

Morocco added 128,222 internet subscribers in the second quarter, for 15 percent quarterly growth to 834,463 at the end of June and 47.29 percent growth versus June 2008, according to telecommunications regulator ANRT.

Of the total internet customers, 50.75 percent are on ADSL and 48.7 percent are on 3G mobile networks. ADSL subscribers were static at 488,567 at the end of June, compared to 489,043 at the end of March.

The customer registration programme instituted by Pakistani regulator the PTA began to take effect in Q3 08, and growth in that period slumped to less than a third of that recorded in Q3 07. The final quarter of the year saw an even worse result, the total declining by 0.30m to finish on 89.91m.

Although all of Pakistan's six operators appear to have been affected to some degree by the disconnection of unregistered customers, market leader Mobilink (Orascom) was by far the hardest hit. It lost 0.67m customers in Q3 and 2.88m in Q4, and finished the year with 28.48m, down 7.0% annually. January and February saw continued losses, a two-month decline of 0.36m taking its total customer base to 28.12m. Its market share at the end of February was 30.7%, a 13-year low.

Pakistan: Monthly Net Additions

Source: Cellular News.

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.

GrameenPhone is leading the market with 21.05 million subscribers in comparison to 20.94 million in February. Followed to this is Banglalink which ended March with 10.83 subscribers, up from 10.70 million last month.

Aktel reported a subscriber base of 8.76 million, an increase from 8.59 million a month before. Warid Telecom subscriber base has grown from 2.20 million to 2.26 million,  CityCell reports 1.87 million subscribers from 1.85 million last month, followed with Teletalk, whose subscriber base mounts to 0.98 million from 0.93 million a month earlier.

Source: Wireless Federation.

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%.

According to figures released by the regulator, Anatel, the number of wireless subscribers in Brazil reached 153.7 million at the end of March, up 0.9% month-on-month. Vivo, a joint venture between Telefonica of Spain and Portugal Telecom, leads the market with a 29.7% share of users, followed by America Movil-backed Claro (25.8%), TIM (23.5%) and Oi (16.8%).

Source: TeleGeography.

­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 Asia Pacific region contains five of the world’s ten largest mobile markets – China and India, which are the number one and two respectively and Indonesia, Japan and Pakistan, the sixth, eighth and tenth largest. These five occupy the top five places in the regional list, which is completed through the addition of the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea and Bangladesh.

During 2008, Indonesia overtook Japan to become the region’s third largest market with a total of 140.2m connections. Japan’s grip on fourth place is loosening, with Pakistan the main challenger – even though that market saw a slight reduction in numbers in Q4 as unregistered customers were culled. Japan added just over 5m connections to reach 105.8m, while Pakistan ended with 89.9m. The Philippines retains sixth place, with 68.1m customers, but it is likely to drop behind Vietnam in 2009. The market here is being liberalised (if that is the right word for a process which awards ever more licences to entities that are all, ultimately, state-controlled) and demand is rising rapidly. The market as a whole added over 30m new connections for a total of 67.2m, to become the region’s seventh largest, ahead of Thailand, which had begun the year in seventh place and added nearly 9m connections over the year to close with 61.9m. Ninth and tenth places go to South Korea (down from eighth, with 45.6m) and Bangladesh (unchanged, with 45.2m).

Source: Cellular News.

Taiwan ended Q4'08 with a mobile subscriber base of 25.41 million, reports National Communications Commission. The data showed a rise of 4.6% as the operators added a total of 1.13 million subscribers since December�f07. The country had a mobile penetration of 110.3% at the end of Q4'08.

Source: Wireless Federation.

­The Kenyan market saw some major developments in the second half of 2008: in Q3, fixed operator Telkom Kenya launched a mobile network, and in the last quarter of the year, Econet Wireless finally managed to get up and running, more than five years after it was first awarded a licence. At the end of 2008, there were 15.90m mobile customers in Kenya. Annual net additions stood at 4.55m, up from 4.08m a year earlier, but proportionate growth fell from 56.0% to 40.1%. Fourth-quarter net additions increased from 0.65m in Q4 07 to 1.37 in Q4 08.

Safaricom dominates the Kenyan market, although the launch of Telkom (Orange) and Econet appears to have dented its market share. At the end of 2008 it had 12.39m customers, more than 9m ahead of nearest rival Celtel. However, having lost 2.7pp market share in Q3 08, it dipped a further 4.4pp in Q4 08 to finish the year on 77.9%. By contrast, Celtel does not appear to have suffered at all from the launch of the new networks, adding 4.4pp of market share in the second half of 2008 to finish on 19.4%. It topped the market for net additions in Q4 08 with a gain of 0.52m (compared to 0.43m for Safaricom) and finished the year on 3.08m.

Kenya: Quarterly Net Additions, Q1 08 – Q4 08

Source: Cellular News.

The number of telephone subscribers (fixed and mobile) in Nepal topped 5.5 million as at March 2009, up around 45% year-on-year, according to data published by the telecoms regulator the Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA). Of the total, 622,667 were fixed line connections either to Nepal Telecom (NT, 551,566), United Telecom Ltd (UTL, 67,378), or STM Telecom (3,723), while a further 60,171 were signed up to UTL’s limited mobility service. Mobile still accounts for the overwhelming majority of connections however, totalling 4.167 million by last month. The mobile market leader is, once again, NT with 2.357 million subscribers, ahead of Spice Nepal (Mero Mobile) with 1.810 million. The NTA also reported a smattering of other connections including NT’s CDMA and Sky Phone services (177,808 and 484,726 respectively), Global Mobile Personal Communications by Satellite (GMPCS, 1,517) and W-CDMA (664). The gains have pushed overall telecoms penetration in the country to 20.45%, broken down as fixed (2.31%), mobile (15.45%) and other (2.69%). At the same date there were a total of 76,502 internet subscribers, including 13,893 ADSL users.

Source: TeleGeography.

­The Mexican mobile market finished the year on 77.93m customers with a below-par performance for customer growth in Q4 2008. In fact, the quarterly increase of 2.24m was the smallest gain since Q2 06 and the smallest fourth-quarter gain in five years. The main cause of this was Iusacell’s loss of 0.56m customers as the result of a customer clean-up programme.

However, the other operators also saw slightly disappointing figures for quarterly net additions, with all three recording a gain below that of Q4 07. The result was a marked slowdown in annual customer growth: from 21.2% in 2007, the rate fell to 13.4% in 2008, the first time it has dropped below 15% since Q4 03. However, with penetration at 70.5% at the end of the year, the decline may not be inexorable, and it is possible that 2009 will see a slight upturn.

Japanese mobile operators reported a subscriber base of 107.49 million, added 1 million new subscribers. Softbank is leading the market with a net addition of 381,700 subscribers, ended the month with 20.63 million subscribers. Followed to this is NTT DoCoMo with a net addition of 278,200, taking its total subscriber base to 54.6 million. The incumbent added 1,100 2in1 plan customers to reach 459,300 subscribers. Emobile signed up 121,900 new subscribers bringing its total to 1.41 million. KDDI has gained 223,100 and ended March with 30.84 million subscribers in total. PHS provider Willcom added 6,100 subscribers in March to reach a total of 4.56 million subscribers.

Source: Wireless Federation.

­It has been reported that the 3G network launched late last year in North Korea has already signed up some 20,000 subscribers. The Japan based, pro-North Korea newspaper, Choson Sinbo reported the figures noting that the customers include foreigners allowed to work in the country.

Last year, the Orascom Telecom, which owns 75% of the mobile network holding company, said that it expects to sign up an initial 100,000 subscribers when it launches its network.

The web based publication confirmed that the network coverage had expanded outside the capital city, Pyongyang and now included the main road running up to the Northern city of Hyangsan (noted for its pyramid shaped hotel). National coverage is expected by 2012.

Despite the fact that the Canadian mobile market is probably the least developed in the Western world, with a penetration rate of just 63.9% at the end of 2008, it performed poorly in the fourth quarter of the year. Quarterly net additions stood at just under 410k, down from 580k in Q4 07. In fact, this was the smallest fourth-quarter gain since 1997. More worryingly still, this was the first year since 1990 that fourth-quarter net additions were not the highest of the year: the Q3 08 increase was more than 27% higher than the Q4 08 figure at 520k.

In real terms, the total market stood at 21.63m customers at the end of 2008. Rogers led the way with 7.94m ahead of Bell (6.50m) and TELUS (6.13m). The other operators, MTS and SaskTel, are both regional (operating in Manitoba and Saskatchewan provinces) and with 0.4m and 0.5m connections respectively they have little market presence.

Source: Cellular News.

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.

The Pakistan mobile subscriber base has raised to 91.008 million in February 2009, growing from 90.703 million in January, reports PTA. Mobile density in Pakistan hiked to 56.50%, up from 56.30% in January.

Mobilink, the market leader, saw a drop in mobile subscriber base which fell from 28.315 million to 28.116 million whereas Telenor jumped to the second position with a subscriber base of 19.842 million, up from 19.657 million in January. Ufone grabbed the third position with 19.497 million subscribers, up from 19.415 million in January followed by Warid which ended February’09 with a subscriber base of 17.251 million. Zong stood at the last position with 5.979 million subscribers.

Source: Wireless Federation.

­Although the American market did not suffer quite so badly as the Canadian market in the fourth quarter, it did see a disappointing figure for net additions. The quarterly gain of 4.15m represented the lowest increase since 2002, and it was 58% lower than the 6.55m recorded in Q4 07. The total market reached 271m customers, equivalent to a penetration rate of 88.8%. Meanwhile, the inexorable decline in annual growth continued: 2008 saw an uplift of just 6.1%, the lowest figure ever recorded in the market in more than 25 years of service.

Apart from declining growth, the other significant trend in the American market in recent times has been consolidation. In Q4 07 Dobson and Rural Cellular were acquired by AT&T and Verizon Wireless respectively, and SunCom Wireless followed shortly afterwards, T-Mobile snapping it up in Q1 08. Later in the year, AT&T announced that it was to acquire Centennial Communications. However, all of these deals paled in comparison alongside Verizon’s merger with Alltel, which will create the largest mobile company by customer numbers in the country – even after some enforced disposals due to overlapping properties – thereby usurping AT&T.

Source: Cellular News.

The central African nation of Burundi was home to 480,000 mobile subscribers at the end of 2008, up 78% on the 270,000 reported the previous year, according to data published by the national telecoms regulator, Agence de Regulation et de Controle des Telecom (ARCT). The sharp rise has been attributed to increased competition in the local market and mobile network expansion by the four active operators - U-Com, ONAMOB, Africell and Econet. Two more licensed operators, Lacell and HiTS Telecom are yet to launch services. U-Com claimed the lion’s share with 344,830 users as at 31 December 2008, with the remainder split between its three rivals. ARCT is targeting 700,000 mobile subscribers in the country by 2010. The regulator’s report also highlighted earnings for the four cellcos reached BIF33.2 billion (USD27.31 million) in 2008, up from BIF25 billion the previous year.

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.

Pannon, Vodafone and T-mobile have reportedly added 900 subscribers in February, taking its total subscriber base to 12.18 million. The market share of Pannon slipped from 34.71% in January to 34.63% in February, whereas T-Mobile’s market share also dropped from 44.14% to 44.10 %. Vodafone Market share reached 21.27%, from 21.15% in January. The active subscription arrived at 10.92 million, down 42,337 in comparison to the last month. Mobile penetration stood flat at 121.4% in February.

Source: Wireless Federation.

The number of registered SIM cards in Brazil totalled 152.36 million at the end of February 2009, up 415,909 (0.27%) on the month of January, according to data published by the local telecoms regulator Anatel. Market leader Vivo, a joint venture of Telefonica of Spain and Portugal Telecom, had 29.8% of all subscriptions at the end of February, ahead of America Movil’s Telecom Americas (Claro) unit with 25.84%, and Telecom Italia-controlled TIM Brasil with 23.45%, in third. The fourth-placed cellco was Oi (Telemar) with a market share of 16.60%, Anatel said.

Source: TeleGeography.

According to the data revealed by telecoms regulator, Indian mobile firms have added 13.45 million subscribers in February, a performance bettered only by January’s record signings of 15.41 million. The country ends February with a subscriber base of 375.74 million, up 3.7% in comparison with January.

• Bharti Airtel (BRTI.BO) added 2.7 million mobile users in February, taking its total to 91.11 million.
• Reliance Communications, added 3.3 million mobile subscribers in February, taking its total to 69.64 million.
• Third-ranked Vodafone Essar added up 2.6 million users in February, taking its total to 65.92 million.

Source: Wireless Federation.

Russia added 0.9 million in the month of February taking the total to 190 million, reports Russian consultancy firm ACM Consulting. The mobile penetration rate rose to 131%, up by 0.6% from January 2009 and 16% from February 2008.

On the other hand, Ukraine experienced a downfall in terms of subscribers which fell by 0.2 million, taking down the total subscribers base to 55.6 million. The mobile penetration rate fell to 120.5%, down by 0.4% from January 2009.

Source: Wireless Federation.

India's telecoms regulator has published the connection figures for February, noting that a total of 13.42 million telephone connections (Wireline and Wireless) have been added during February 2009 as compared to 15.26 million connections added in January 2009.

The total number of telephone connections reaches 413.47 million at the end of February 2009 as compared to 400.05 million in January 2009. With this growth, the overall tele-density has reached 35.62 at the end of February 2009 as against 34.50 in January 2009.

The total wireless subscribers (GSM, CDMA & WLL(F)) base stood at 375.74 million at the end of February 2009. A total of 13.44 million wireless subscribers have been added during the month of February 2009 as against 15.41 million wireless subscribers added during the month of January 2009.

In the wireline segment, the subscriber base has decreased to 37.73 million in the month of February 2009 as against 37.75 million subscribers in January 2009 registering a drop of 0.02 million.

Source: Cellular News.

The number of mobile subscribers in Russia increased to 190 million in February 2009, up by 0.9 million from January 2009 and up by 23.2 million from February 2008, according to Russian consultancy firm ACM Consulting. Penetration increased to 131 percent, up 0.6 percent from January 2009 and up 16 percent from February 2008. At the end of February, there were 188 and 169 Sim cards in use per 100 inhabitants in Moscow and St. Petersburg, respectively. In Ukraine, the number of subscribers decreased to 55.6 million, down 0.2 million from January 2009 and up 0.4 million from February 2008. Penetration was 120.5 percent, down 0.4 percent from January 2009 and up 1.4 percent from February 2008.

Source: Telecompaper.

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.

The global economic recession and slowdown seems to have no effect on the mobile usage in India as the country adds 9.18 million GSM subscribers in the month of February to its subscriber base, taking the total to 277.1 million subscribers at the end of February.

Source: Wireless Federation.

Pakistan’s mobile subscriber base bounced back to its growth level in the month of January driven by the campaign run by the regulator to register subscribers.

According to the figures revealed by PTA, the mobile subscriber base in Pakistan grew to 90.703 million at January-end, rising from 89.907 million in December.

Country’s leading mobile operator, Mobilink’s subscriber base dipped to 28.315 million in January from 28.480 million in December whereas Telenor experienced a rise in its subscriber base from 19.388 million in December to 19.657 million in January. Ufone retained its third position with a subscriber base of 19.415 million, rising from 19.301 million in December. Warid and Zong followed Ufone with a subscriber base of 17.144 million and 5.852 million respectively.

Source: Wireless Federation.

Nigeria has outdone South Africa to emerge as the largest mobile telecom market in Africa with more than 61 million mobile subscribers, according to a new report.

The report revealed that a continued growth in the country in the coming five years will trigger prompt further competition among the growing number of network operators.

Nigeria’s telecom market was liberalized in 2003, which paved a way to enormous growth rates and has bought in new operators.

The telecom market grew by 23% a year earlier, taking up $8.4 billion in overall telecom service revenues. The mobile penetration rate, at present, stands at 42%. Nigeria’s total telecom is forecasted to grow at CAGR of 5.7 percent from the existing US$8.42 billion in 2008 to $11.14 billion in 2013. Out of the total, 83% is attributed to mobile service revenue over the next five years.

Moreover, the expected launch of various mobile voice and data services is going to benefit the suppliers of mobile network technologies, while demand for CDMA and GSM base stations will stand strong over the next several years.

Source: Wireless Federation.

The Regulatory Unit of Communications Services (URSEC) has released its 2008 report of Uruguay’s telecoms market. The study indicates that the number of fixed lines in service declined from 965,216 in 2007 to 959,000 a year later, representing a fall in teledensity from just over 29% to 28.77%. The country’s total broadband subscribers increased from 165,000 in 2007 to 245,000 over the course of the year, with AntelData posting 227,652 customers, up 155,000 year-on-year. URSEC’s study shows that AntelData’s sole rival, Dedicado, recorded 16,388 broadband subscribers, representing a market share of 7%.

Meanwhile, the number of mobile subscribers increased to 3.508 million in 2008, up from 3.004 million a year earlier. The country’s wireless penetration exceeded 100% during the year, rising from 90.5% to 105%. The report shows that Movistar lead the wireless market at the end of 2008 with 1.42 million subscribers and 40% market share, followed closely by Ancel with 1.38 million customers and 38% of the market. Claro ranked third at year-end 2008 with 769,992 subscribers, representing 22% market share. URSEC recorded that pre-paid subscribers made up 77% of the total in 2008, down from 83% a year earlier.

Source: TeleGeography.

China, according to the new statistics unveiled by MIIT, had a mobile subscriber base of 649.7 million at the end of January 2009. China’s three leading mobile operators together added 8.49 million new subscribers in January, growing at a constant pace.

Source: Wireless Federation.

Japan’s mobile subscriber base totalled to 106.48 million, with the net addition of 387,500 new subscribers in Feb, according to the figures from Telecommunications Carrier Association (TCA). Softbank Mobile signed up 131,000 new subscribers and ended the month with 20.25 million subscribers.

Subsequent to Softbank, NTT subscriber base reached 54.32 million, adding 103,100 new subscribers. The operator lost 5000 2in1 plan customers to reach 458,200 subscribers. Emobile added 96,500 new subscribers, total reached 1.28 million subscribers. KDDI gained 56,900 new customers and ended February with 30.62 million customers in total. PHS provider Willcom signed up 8300 new subscribers, base totalled to 4.56 million at the end-February.

Source: Wireless Federation.

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.

Presenting the government’s budget statement to parliament yesterday, Dr Kwabena Duffuor, Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, said the country had 10,522,240 fixed line and mobile users at the end of 2008, with growth attributed to the cellular sector. The total mobile base has increased from 383,000 in 2002 to 10,242,916 at the end of last year he said, whilst the fixed line total dropped from 389,483 to 279,324. Dr Duffuor attributed the fall to the removal of 'dormant' subscribers from Ghana Telecom’s fixed line network, and said that cellular growth was the result of ‘the creation of an enabling environment and the positive sustenance of competition in the sector’.

Dr Duffuor said that in order to promote a wider penetration of ICT services, the Ministry of Communications has facilitated the transformation of Voltacom's fibre-optic assets into a National Communications Backbone Infrastructure network to provide open access broadband connectivity nationwide. Furthermore, 39 Common Telecom Facilities were completed last year which enabled telecom operators to extend their services to about 273 communities under the Ghana Investment Fund for Telecommunication development (GIFTEL).

Source: TeleGeography.

Mobile penetration rate in the Philippines has reportedly reached a mark of 75% at the end of 2008. The growth in mobile penetration rate was driven by the number of SIM cards sold by the mobile operators in the country which was recorded 67.9 million at the end of 2008.

According to Napoleon Nazareno, President PLDT, the growth in the subscriber base is likely to be slower in 2009 as the mobile penetration rate has already reached 75%.

PLDT recently posted a subscriber base of 35.2 million, including 20.9 million Smart subscribers and 14.3 million Talk ’N Text subscribers.

Whereas Globe Telecom, country’s second largest mobile operator, at 2008-end had a subscriber base of 24.7 million, including both Globe and Touch Mobile subscribers.

The third mobile operator Digital Telecommunications, reportedly said that it had more than 8 million subscribers under the brand name Sun Cellular.

Source: Wireless Federation.

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.

The subscriber base of Korea totalled to 45.99 million at the end of February, after the addition of 211,000 new subscribers during the month. SK Telecom led the market with the net addition of 100,000 subscribers and ended February with 23.22 million subscribers, including 9.04 million WCDMA users.

The strong contender KTF added 58,000 and the subscriber base totalled to 14.48 million, followed by LG Telecom which ended the month 8.29 million subscribers after gaining 53,568 new subscribers in February. LGT reported the addition between 20,000 and 30,000 new subscribers per month.

Source: Wireless Federation.

­Nigeria’s telecoms regulator the NCC has reported customer numbers for the fourth quarter of 2008. The total customer base reached 62.99m at the end of the year having increased by 55.9% annually. On a quarterly basis, net additions stood at 7.15m, only just short of the national and continental record of 7.38m, set in Q2 08.

Quarterly Net Additions, Total and CDMA

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.

Qatar Telecom has posted a record high of more than 1.8 million mobile customers in Qatar. The subscribers have now exceeded the total population of Qatar, as people look to own multiple phones for business and personal use. Despite of global economic recession, the rapid accumulation of new subscribers up from 1.5 million in November 2008 was achieved.

The gain reflects both the underlying strength of Qatar’s economy and Qtel’s ongoing success in developing new products and services that exceed its customers’ expectations.

The boost in the subscriber base is attributed to re-launch of two of Qtel’s product, the HALA Pay-As-You-Talk service (prepaid) and the all-new “Shahry” post-paid mobile phone service.

Source: Wireless Federation.

Having seen monthly gains averaging 8.9m in the first six months of 2008, the Chinese market did not manage to post a figure above 7.9m in the second six months of the year. This was because of the impact of Unicom’s sale of its CDMA network: in July-September, Unicom saw monthly declines in its CDMA base, presumably because its imminent sale reduced the need to attract new customers; in October, China Telecom acquired the network and cleaned up the base, with a net loss of 13.3m; and in November and December there were further losses to the CDMA base, presumably due to further rationalisation.

However, this clean-up process now seems at an end, with China Telecom gaining 1.02m customers in January to finish the month on 28.93m. China Mobile recorded a gain of 6.64m, its lowest figure since December 2007, and China Unicom added just 0.84m (compared to 1.43m in January 2008), but Telecom’s performance meant that the total market gained just under 8.50m, the best performance since June 2008 and above the 8.44m recorded in January 2008.

Source: Cellular News.

Chile’s subscriber base totals to 14.8 million at the end of 2008, up by 6.03% from 13.95 million at 31 December 2007. Chile added 840,000 mobile subscribers throughout 2008. According to the statistics, mobile penetration rate, at the end of 2008, grew to 87.8% from 84.1% a year earlier. Of the total subscriber base posted, 10.76 million subscribers comprised prepaid users whereas the remaining 4.03 million were contract subscribers. Movistar lead the Chile’s mobile market with 42.57% market share, followed by Entel PCS with 38.80%, Claro with 18.58 and Nextel with 0.05 % market share.

Source: Wireless Federation.

The latest monthly data from Anatel, the Brazilian regulator, shows a marked reduction in the pace of the growth in the market. This should come as no surprise – the fourth quarter saw a record number of new connections and included two of the four best months ever. The industry added a total of 1.31m new connections in January, to take the market total to 151.9m, equivalent to nearly 70% penetration.

The market share numbers that accompany the subscriber data suggest that while Claro, the America Movil subsidiary, has continued to outpace TIM, it has been unable to make much of an inroad into Vivo’s lead. Claro has grown from 38.7m to 39.1m, but Vivo has moved from 44.9m to 45.3m, so the relative positioning is broadly unchanged. TIM, the number three operator, appears to be losing market share and is now some 2.5m behind Claro and not much more than 6m ahead of the proforma total of 30.4m that TNL will have following its merger with Brasil Telecom.

The last point to note relates to technology. Anatel gives us a choice of two numbers for the W-CDMA base: we prefer the higher (2.7m) rather than the lower (1.9m) which would imply a month on month drop of nearly 0.5m – or twice the number of CDMA disconnections. ­Since Vivo’s move to GSM, the number of CDMA accounts has dropped by over 10m and now stands at just 12.6m. It can only be a matter of time before it disappears from this part of the world altogether.

Source: Cellular News.

Source: TeleGeography.

Vietnam’s telecommunications sector reportedly earned estimated revenue of $ 440 million dollars in the first month of this year, a year-on-year increase of 46.6% despite the country’s economic slowdown. According to Vietnam’s General Statistics Office, Vietnam saw about 3.2 million telephone subscribers be registered in January this year, an increase of 160.4% over the same period last year. Mobile subscribers accounted for 85% of the total. Presently, Vietnam subscriber base totals to 82.6 million, of which Vietnam’s two biggies, the Vietnam Post and Telecommunications Group (VNPT) and Viettel Corporation rules 90% of the domestic market.

Source: Wireless Federation.

India's mobile phone subscriber base jumped by a record 15.41 million customer in January, according to data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

The total for the country now stands at 362.30 million, up from 233.63 million at the end of last January.

In the landline segment, the subscriber base has decreased to 37.75 million in the month of January 2009 as against 37.90 million subscribers in December 2008 registering a drop of 0.15 million

The country's teledensity stands at 34.5%.

Source: Cellular News.

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.

Zain Zambia, posted a rise of 25% in its net profit to ZMK 265 billion for the full year 2008. The company’s revenue grows by 32% to ZMK 1.217 trillion, attributed to the increase in number of subscribers, which grew by 36% during the period. Operating expenses amounted to ZMK 782 billion in comparison to 2007’s ZMK 530 billion, and EBITDA grew by 24% to ZMK 606 billion. The firm continues to dominate the sector with a market share of 73 percent but said 2009 will be a challenging year due to the global financial crisis, Zain Zambia MD David Holliday said. The incumbent reported a subscriber base of 2.7 million customers at the end of December, up from 2.3 million customers in June 2008.

Source: Wireless Federation.

According to Morocco's telecoms regulator ANRT, the country’s mobile phone subscriber base rose by 13.9% year-on-year to 22.816 million by the end of 2008, compared to 20.029 million at end-2007, boosting cellular penetration by eight percentage points to 74%. In terms of market share, Maroc Telecom was attributed 63.4% of mobile subscribers at end-December, compared to 34.7% for Medi Telecom and 1.9% for Wana. Subscribers to 3G internet services grew from 42,729 to 268,131 in the year, an increase of 528%, with all three mobile operators competing in the mobile broadband sector.

The fixed telephony market achieved an annual increase of 25.0% in subscribers, with a total of 2.991 million lines in service at 31 December 2008 (including services with restricted mobility, the majority of which are provided by Wana).

The number of broadband internet subscribers saw a near stagnation in 2008, with annual growth of just 1.3% to 482,791 (compared to growth of 21.9% in 2007 and 57.6% in 2006).

Source: TeleGeography.

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.

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.

GSM subscriber base of the country has grown to 9.3 million (excluding Reliance Telecom) in Jan’09. According to a recent data, the total GSM subscriber base in the country rose to 267.54 million up from 257.85 million in December 2008, a growth of about 3.6% during the month of January.
Bharti Airtel, leads the chart as its subscriber base grows to 88.38 million, added 2.73 million subscribers in January and captures 33.04% market share. Vodafone-Essar has added about 2.4 million subscribers and its subscriber base totals to 63.34 million by the end of January. The company maintained a market share of 23.68%.

The state-owned telco BSNL market share dropped from 16.05% in December, 2008 to 15.95% in January, 2009. The company’s subscriber base totals to 42.67 million, added around 1.3 million subscribers to its total. Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd. (MTNL) subscribers have crossed the mark of 4 million, added over 1 lakh subscribers to its total. However, Idea Cellular (along with Spice Communications) posted a rise of 5.27% in it subscriber base in comparison to last month. The incumbent subscriber base totals to 40 million with the addition of 2 million subscribers during the month.

Source: Wireless Federation.

Turkcell, Turkey’s largest mobile operator in terms of subscribers, has reported that it attracted 650,000 net new customers in the final three months of 2008, taking its total user base to 37 million. Rival operator Avea said on Friday that it had gained 244,000 net new subscribers since the implementation of mobile number portability (MNP) in mid-November, meaning that the country’s other cellco, Vodafone, has been the big loser since MNP was introduced; it saw customer numbers fall from 17.36 million at end-September to 16.72 million three months later.

Source: teleGeography.

Ecuadorian telecoms authority Superintendencia de Telecomunicaciones (Suptel) has reported that, at the end of 2008, cellular connections in the country reached a total of 11.5 million, with market leader Conecel (Porta) recording 8.1 million users, followed by Movistar Ecuador with 3.1 million subscribers and Telecsa (Alegro) trailing with 303,000 active mobile SIMs. The operators reported that the majority of their mobile phone users remain on pre-paid tariffs: 88.57% at Porta, 84.88% of Movistar’s total base and 85.56% of Alegro customers.

Source: TeleGeography.

According to data published by the Telecommunications Carrier Association (TCA), Japan was home to 106.1 million mobile subscribers by 31 January 2008, thanks to the net addition of 269,000 new connections in the month. The country’s third largest operator by subscribers, Softbank Mobile, once again led the pack in terms of net sign-ups, adding 120,400 new customers to close January with more than 20.12 million subscribers. It was followed by number one operator NTT DoCoMo, which added a net 64,300 new users to reach a total of 54.22 million, while KDDI gained just 12,600 mobile users to end the month with 30.56 million. Fourth placed eMobile signed up an impressive 71,700 net new subscribers to lift its total to 1.19 million and PHS operator Willcom shipped 20,800 customers for a total of 4.55 million.

Source: TeleGeography.

­Cuba's sole mobile phone network, ETECSA says that its subscriber base has surged by 60% to reach nearly half a million customers after the government relaxed the conditions for private citizens to buy mobile phones.

President Raul Castro's government lifted a ban which had restricted ownership to tourists and VIPs in April last year. Nearly 8,000 new connections were sold in the first ten days after the restrictions were lifted. The government also halved the sign-up fee - although it still represents about three months wages for the average worker.

The local newspaper, Juventud Rebelde reported that around 480,000 cellular lines are now in use, compared with 300,000 before the law change.

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.

Comision Nacional de Comunicaciones (CNC), Argentina’s telecoms regulator, has reported the country’s wireless lines in service increased by almost 15% compared to end-2007. At 31 December 2008 the country’s wireless subscribers totaled 46.5 million, up from 40.4 million a year earlier, of which, 41.6 million (90%) customers were pre-paid. The regulator did release a breakdown of the country’s individual wireless operators, but according to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms database, Movistar was narrowly the country’s largest cellco by subscribers with 14.65 million at 30 September 2008, while main rival Claro Argentina claimed 14.64 million wireless customers. Telecom Personal had a subscriber base of 11.94 million at the same date, while Nextel Argentina lagged behind with 938,000 subscribers.

Source: TeleGeography.

The Chinese mobile market has ended 2008 with a subscriber base of 641.23 million, recording a growth rate of 1.71% monthly and 17.17% annualy, reports China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The user density in the country rose to 48.5%. In December’08, the mobile phone subscribers in China texted nearly 61.69 billion SMS, at an average of 3.12 SMS per phone number a day.

Source: Wireless Federation.

Ugandan ICT Minister said that the number of wireless subscribers rose to 8.2 million at the end of 2008. The mobile penetration stood at around 25%. According to a report, at the end of September 2008 MTN retained a position of strength in the Ugandan wireless arena, with a market share of 42% (3.23 million subscribers), though this was down from 57.6% 18 months earlier. Zain bags second position with 1.86 million customers, where as UTL has an estimated 1.65 million. The new incumbent Warid claimed a laudable million customers at the end of September 2008, 13% of the market, just eight months after launch.

Source: Wireless Federation.

­The Indonesian market achieved a record figure for quarterly net additions in Q3 08 with an increase of 15.5m, 2m higher than the previous record, which was set in Q2 08. This took the number of connections in Indonesia to 131.64m, with annual growth of 57.1% compared to 47.9% for the prior twelve months.

UAE's mobile subscriber base accounting of two wireless operators, Etisalat and Du. Etisalat reached to 7.3 million in Q4'08 at December'08-end, rising from 6.37 million a year earlier. Etisalat's market share decreased from 77.24% in September�f08 to 74% at December'08-end whereas Du's market share rose from 22.76% to 26% in the same time period. The operator forecasts a 28.2% rise in net income at 2008-end to $2.5 billion. At the end of December Du had an estimated 3.05 million subscribers, up from 2.07 million a year earlier. Du's revenue is also expected to have grown by 8.6% in 2008, boosted by strong mobile revenue growth.

Source: Wireless Federation.

­Nigeria’s Q3 08 growth could not match the record-breaking levels seen in the previous quarter, when 7.38m new connections were added - more than double the best figure recorded in any other African nation. However, its third-quarter boost of 4.11m was the second best figure ever recorded in the market, which is particularly impressive given that one of the top three operators, Glo, suffered a loss of 0.6m customers in the quarter. At the end of Q3, there were 55.8m connections in Nigeria, up 51% year on year with annual net additions of 18.8m.

­The ten fastest growing operators in the MEA region added over 12m new customers in aggregate over the last three months, implying an average gain of over 1.25m. In fact, all but three of the ten managed seven figure gains.

Mobinil in Egypt produced by far the best result in the region, with 2.58m net adds - more than it connected in the first two quarters of the year and nearly one million more than second placed MTN Nigeria managed. The Egyptian market has been booming since the launch of the country’s third network, but as is so often the way, the incumbents have been the main beneficiaries. Vodafone Egypt was the fourth fastest growing company in the quarter, with 1.39m new customers, while Etisalat Egypt, the new entrant, only managed a gain of 310k, for 28th place overall.

An increased competitive threat also lay behind the strong performance by third placed Irancell and fifth placed TCI Iran. These two added 1.55m and 1.15m connections respectively, but this week, a third national mobile licence has been awarded to a consortium led coincidentally (or perhaps not) by Etisalat. This will have exclusive rights to offer 3G services, at least for the moment. Experience shows that agreements of this kind are rarely honoured if there is a licence fee to be had.

India has reportedly added a record of 10.81 million wireless subscribers in the month of December, raising its subscriber base to 346.9 million at 2008-end. The Indian mobile subscriber base grew by 48.5% in 2008. The ever-growing rate of subscriber base in India is driven by cheap call rates, low-end handsets and network expansion spree.

Source: Wireless Federation.

­The South African market broke through the 100% penetration barrier during Q3 08 to finish the quarter on 101.8%. The total market reached 44.51m customers. Annual growth slowed from 24.2% for the 12 months ending 30th September 2007 to 10.7% for the subsequent 12 months, the lowest rate since Q2 02. However, this rate was the same as that recorded in Q2 08, and in real terms annual growth rose quarter-on-quarter, from 4.18m to 4.30m.

According to Pakistan’s Telecoomunication Authority (PTA) figures, the mobile phone tele-density at the end of December 2008 declining 40 basis points pegged at 55.8 %, while the countrywide mobile phone subscribers’ tally during the past three months dwindled by 1 million.

The subscriber base at the end of September 2008 had ascended to 90 million. After the PTA notification of discounting anonymous connections, the no. is seen falling.

Source: Wireless Federation.

According to a local media report, citing data published at a review of the telecoms and IT sector by the Uzbek Cabinet of Ministers, the total number of mobile users in Uzbekistan have doubled to 12.5 million in 2008. THe mobile penetration in the country stood at 46% at 2008-end.

Source: Wireless Federation.

­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 number of mobile connections in Venezuela stood at 26.67m at the end of Q3 08, with penetration edging over 100% during the quarter to finish on 100.6%. It thus became the third South American nation to reach 100% after Suriname and Argentina, although French overseas departement French Guiana also joined the club during the quarter with 100.5% at the end of September. (Uruguay has almost certainly joined this group at the time of writing, having reached 99.0% at the end of Q3.)

Venezuela: Customers, GSM vs. CDMA

Source: Cellular News.

According to Bangladesh Telecommunication and Regulatory Commission (BTRC), Bangladesh finished 2008 with a mobile subscriber base of 44.6 million by adding 10.27 million subscribers in the year, at a growth rate of 30% compared to the 62% growth recorded in 2007. According to statistics revealed, Grameenphone lead the market by adding 4.51 million in 2008, taking its total subscriber base to 20.99 million at 2008-end, followed by Banglalink which added 3.25 million subscribers and AKTEL adding 1.8 million to reach a subscriber base of 10.33 million and 8.20 million, respectively.

The new entrant to the market, Warid Telecom ended 2008 with a subscriber base of 2.33 million a step further of CityCell and Teletalk, who stood at a subscriber base of 1.81 million and 980,000 respectively.

Source: Wireless Federation.

­The Mexican mobile market surpassed the 75m mark during Q3 08 to finish the quarter with just under 75.7m customers. In proportionate terms, annual growth continued the decline that began in Q3 07, although the rate of 17.2% was still a reasonably strong figure. At the end of the quarter penetration stood at 68.6%, up 9.4pp annually, and it thus seems a near- certainty that the 75% mark will be reached during 2009.

Source: Cellular News.

The Indian GSM operators have reportedly added more than 8 million mobile subscribers in the Dec’08 keeping its flag flying high as world’s fastest growing mobile market. According to the latest data compiled by COAI, India’s GSM subscriber base has reached the mark of 258 million at December’08 end, rising by 3.25 % from November’08. Bharti Airtel continued to be the market leader as it added over 2.7 million new subscribers taking its subscriber base to 87 million. Airtel held a market share of 33.22% at December end. Vodafone followed with a market share 23.63% and added 2 million subscribers in Dec’08 taking its total subscriber base to about 60 million. Idea Cellular added 1 million subscribers during the same period taking its total subscriber base to 38 million. BSNL, the state-owned incumbent, experienced a positive growth in December taking its subscriber base to 41 million.

Source: Wireless Federation.

The Indian GSM operators have reportedly added more than 8 million mobile subscribers in the Dec’08 keeping its flag flying high as world’s fastest growing mobile market. According to the latest data compiled by COAI, India’s GSM subscriber base has reached the mark of 258 million at December’08 end, rising by 3.25 % from November’08. Bharti Airtel continued to be the market leader as it added over 2.7 million new subscribers taking its subscriber base to 87 million. Airtel held a market share of 33.22% at December end. Vodafone followed with a market share 23.63% and added 2 million subscribers in Dec’08 taking its total subscriber base to about 60 million. Idea Cellular added 1 million subscribers during the same period taking its total subscriber base to 38 million. BSNL, the state-owned incumbent, experienced a positive growth in December taking its subscriber base to 41 million.

Source: Wireless Federation.

According to data published today by Japan’s Telecommunications Carriers Association (TCA), the country’s incumbent mobile operators collectively added a net 400,200 new users last month to end the year with a total 105.825 million mobile subscribers. Softbank Mobile recorded 135,200 net additions last month, compared with 36,000 for KDDI’s ‘au’ brand, and 120,400 for the country’s leading operator by subscribers, DoCoMo. At the start of this year, DoCoMo had 54.16 million customers, ahead of KDDI with 30.55 million and Softbank Mobile with 19.99 million. The market's newest entrant eMobile added 108,600 new users to end the year with 1.12 million, while the leading PHS operator, Willcom, had 4.57 million customers, up just 1,300 from a month before.

Source: TeleGeography.

Asiacell has reportedly announced that its subscriber base has exceeded six million. According to a report, Asiacell has claimed 5.56 million subscribers at the end of September 2008, representing a 7.8% increase in the three-month period. Asiacell caters to 34% market share in terms of subscribers; its main rival Zain Iraq boasts 52%. Asiacell has claimed to be the only wireless network operator to provide coverage of the whole country.

Source: Wireless Federation.

­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.

There were 633.84 million subscribers of mobile communication services in China as of the end of November 2008, growing by 1.05% on month and by 17.51% on year, according to statistics published by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) at its Chinese-language web site.

The number of subscribers at the end of November accounted for 47.3% of the country’s population (user density).

Also at the end of November 2008 there were 348.48 million subscribers of fixed telecommunication networks in China, translating into a user density of 26.8%.

In November 2008, mobile phone subscribers in China sent 56.87 billion short messages, averaging 3.01 short messages per phone number a day.

Source: Wireless Federation.

South Korea posted a subscriber base of  45.6 million at the end of 2008, as per the recent statistics. SK Telecom has added 52,000 in December 2008, the subscriber base totals to 23.03 million. The strong contender, KTF has ended month with 14.37 million customers, after adding 36,000 new subscribers. In Dec’08, LG Telecom subscriber base totals to 8.21 million, after gaining 23,303 subscribers.

Source: Wireless Federation.

Cuban state-owned telco ETECSA increased its wireless subscriber base by more than 130,000 in 2008, BNamericas reports. ETECSA, the sole cellco in Cuba, finished the year with 330,000 subscribers compared to 273,600 in September 2008. The increase was due to a move by the government to make mobile phones more accessible to citizens by reducing the cost of activating wireless devices. ETECSA hopes to increase its subscriber base by 250,000 in 2009, rising to a total of 1.6 million by 2012, equivalent to around 10% of the Cuban population.

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.

Adel Al Mutawa, executive director of group communications, said: "By reaching 1.5 million customers, Qtel has demonstrated our ability to offer something for everybody in Qatar, and our capacity to match the nation's ongoing growth with impressive development of our own."

In reaching its 1.5 millionth customer, Qtel has significantly grown its mobile phone customer base from 1.26 million recorded in 2007. The customer subscribe base now exceeds the total population of Qatar, as people look to own multiple phones for business and personal use, the company said in a statement.

In the Qtel Group announcement for the 2008 third quarter, the company recorded more than 55.7 million consolidated customers across its global operations.

Source: Gulf News.

According to the statistics from market regulator PTA, Pakistan’s subscriber base drops by 0.1% to 90.41 million in November. The figures in October were 90.51 million. Mobilink had 30.06 million in its kitty, lost 827,000 customers during November, followed by Ufone with 19.1 million. Telenor stands at third position with 18.88 million subscribers, followed by Warid with 16.66 million subscribers. Zong’s subscribers have reached the mark of 5.39 million, while Instaphone subscribers remained sturdy at 321,134. Mobile teledensity was constant at 56.20% in November.

Source: Wireless Federation.

The subscriber base of phone users in Uganda has reached the mark of 7million, reports Minister of Information, Dr Ham Mukasa Mulira. The Minister says the growth is driven by liberalisation of communication sector and then coming of competition among the private entrants to the market.

Dr Mulira commended the government for having liberalised fully the communications sector. “I am pleased to inform you that the policy adopted has yielded extremely positive results with penetration growing from 5 to 6 per cent in 2006 to over 20 per cent in just over two years,”.

Over the years, the rise in numbers has been driven by slashing calling rates, aggressive marketing and product innovation by both the existing and latest phone companies. At the start of the year, there were about 5.4 million subscribers but the number tremendously rose with the commercial entry of Warid Telecom on February 7 this year.

Source: Wireless Federation.

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.

This estimate by Informa Telecoms & Media represents 60% of the entire global population today. In some countries, millions of people are now experiencing connectivity to the world for the first time through wireless and changing their economic, social and political fortunes forever.

Source: Cellular News.

The total Afghan market grew to 6.72m, with an annual uplift of 66.7%. This was less than half the 139.8% recorded in the prior twelve-month period. Indeed, growth has declined consistently over the past four quarters despite the fact that penetration remains low, with a rate of just 20.4% at the end of Q3 08. It seems highly likely that growth will continue to slow, unless there is any significant change in the country’s economic conditions.

Source: Cellular News.

­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.

It is being reported that as many as 25 million mobile phones could be cut off in India from next month - following a security clamp down on unregistered mobile phones following ongoing terrorist attacks in the country. According to the Mobile World subscriber­ tracker, the country ended September with around 315 million mobile phone subscribers.

The number of mobile phone subscribers were almost four-folds more than the main line subscribers in Turkey, the Information Technologies & Communication Agency, said. According to the statistics, landline subscribers totals to 17.6 million in Turkey in October 2008, wherein mobile phone users have reached the mark of 65.7 million in October. However, in 2007 the fixed line subscribers were 19 million and around 54 million were mobile users.

Source: Wireless Federation.

The Brazilian Mobile telephony has added 2.2 million subscribers during November, according to a report. The number of mobile phone subscribers totals to 147 million at the end of November, up 1.5%. Overall Brazilian market has added 26.1 million new mobile lines during 2008. Prepaid subscribers accounted for 80.9% of subscribers, with 119.5 million lines, whilst post-paid subscribers account for 19.1% with 27.5 million lines.

Source: Wireless Federation.

Mobilink, the Pakistani incumbent, has lost more than 2,000,000 subscribers driven by interrupted service and blocking of illegal SIM by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA). Mobilink’s subscriber base now slided from 32 million to 30 million.

It is seen that out of the 20,00,000 subscribers, 7,50,000 have ported their numbers to other cellcos and the rest 12,50,000 have been blocked by PTA after they were identified as illegal SIMs. Mobilink has been facing such problems due to poor quality of services.

Source: Wireless Federation.

India has reportedly added 7 million GSM subcribers in the month of November, ending with a GSM subscriber base of 249.3 million. Bharti Airtel leaded the list of net additions with 2.7million subscribers followed by Vodafone Essar which added 2 million subscribers in November. BSNL added 0.6million subscribers and MTNL added 77,398 subscribers.

Source: Wireless Federation.

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.

Venezuela’s telecoms watchdog Conatel has published data for the third quarter of 2008 in which it says the country’s total fixed lines in service reached 5.896 million, up from 4.696 million a year before, and representing a fixed teledensity of 21.2%. According to the regulator there were 1.172 million broadband internet subscribers at the end of September 2008, up from 776,000 a year earlier, whilst dial-up customers decreased by 9,000 in the same period to 140,000. Conatel’s figures also showed that at the end of the third quarter there were 26.673 million mobile phone subscriptions, up from 21.992 million at the end of September 2007. Mobile penetration was reported to have reached 96.0% at the end of 3Q08, up from 80.5% year-on-year.

Source: TeleGeography.

The mobile subscriber base in Ecuador stood at 11.2mn subscribers at the end of October in comparison to 9.7mn at October-end 2007, reports telecoms supervisory body Supertel. Porta leads the charts with 7.82mn subscribers, followed by Movistar Ecuador of Spain’s Telefónica with 2.95mn subscribers, and locally owned Alegro PCS with 391,587 subscribers.
In the month of October, the operators added a total of 92,564 subscribers.

Source: Wireless Federation.

In Oman, the subscriber base has crossed the mark of three-million for the first time. According to the statistics revealed by the Ministry of National Economy, the subscriber base totals to 3,084,941 at the end of September in comparison to 2,500,000 a year earlier, up 23.4%. Post-paid subscribers totalled 316,441, against 293,622, up 7.8% and pre-paid customers 2,768,500, compared with 2,206,378, up 25.5%. There are two mobile operators, Oman Mobile (Majority state-owned) and the Nawras.  In a move to liberalise mobile sector in Oman, TRA has this year granted licences to five resellers.

Source: Wireless Federation.

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.

Mobinil celebrates its 20 millionth customer and consolidates its leadership position on the Egyptian telecommunications market

Ten years after the launch of commercial activities, Mobinil celebrated yesterday in Cairo its 20 millionth customer in the presence of Olaf Swantee, Senior Executive Vice President, Personal Communication Services, UK, Europe and the Middle East for France Telecom-Orange, and Naguib Sawiris, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Orascom Telecom. Mobinil, which had 15 million customers at the end of 2007, increased its customer base by almost 5 million people in less than one year, a progression of around 35%. This commercial success allows Mobinil, in which France Telecom has a majority stake, to consolidate its leadership position on the Egyptian mobile telecommunications market with approximately 52% of market share.

This performance is essentially due to the high quality of service provided by Mobinil and its capacity to deliver innovative offers. The launch of a new 3G network last September, for example, has provided Egyptians with access to high-speed mobile Internet.

The Orange Foundation also participates in a scholarships programme for girls living in poor districts of Cairo.

Source: Wireless Federation.

­Mexico is set to join the increasing number of countries which require mandatory registration for all mobile phone users, after the lower house of Congress approved a bill to create a national database of subscriber details.

Under the plans in the bill, all mobile phone users will be required to submit a proof of address and their fingerprints to the mobile operators.

According to statistics from the Mobile World analysts, the country ended the first half of this year with 73.45 million mobile phone users. Approximately 95% of the market is prepay - requiring a considerable registration effort by the mobile operators.

Source: Cellular News.

­Pelephone is the third largest of Israel’s four networks, but it was the fastest growing in Q3 08, both in real terms and proportionately. It added 62k customers in the quarter compared to 40k for market leader Cellcom and 36k for second-placed Partner, and its proportionate quarterly growth rate stood at 2.4% compared to 1.3% for both its rivals. At the end of the quarter its active customer base was just short of 2.70m. Nearest rival Partner had 2.88m, which means that its lead over Pelephone was below 200k for the first time in three years.

In fact, Pelephone’s figure for quarterly net additions equalled the Q4 07 figure, which was the best since Q3 05. This is particularly impressive given that the Israeli market is now around 130% penetrated. Despite this strong performance, and the narrowing of Partner’s lead, any changes in the market ranking remain unlikely in the near future. However, Pelephone does lead the market in terms of 3G customers. Its CDMA2000 1x EV-DO base broke the 1m barrier during the quarter to finish on 1.07m, more than 100k higher than the W-CDMA base of Partner. On an annual basis, Pelephone’s 3G base grew 64.1% with net additions of 418k, compared to 410k for the prior twelve-month period.

Source: Cellular News.

Mexico’s telecoms sector has grown 24% in the third quarter of 2008, year-over-year, in terms of overall subscribers, boosted by gains in the fixed line telephony and pay TV segments, according to a report published by Cofetel. The telecommunication industry has posted a rise of 31.4% for the first three quarters. It adds 304,000 new fixed telephony lines and totals subscriber base to 20.4 million. The growth is attributed to number portability, introduced in July’08 and cable players as well.  In mobile telephony, the number of minutes of traffic grows to 35.9% year-on-year. The subscriber base reaches the mark of 73.1 million, grew 16.9% in comparison to 3Q07. The mobile penetration rate reaches 68.5%.

Source: Wireless Federation.

Latin America, will reach the mark of 388 million mobile lines in service by the end of 2008, accounting for 9.6% of the overall mobile lines in service worldwide, according to a recent report. Brazil is anticipated to have 143.2 million phones, Mexico with 76.9 million and Argentina with 44.8 million lines by the end of this year. The entire population of only Uruguay and Chile is covered whereas in Ecuador and Colombia, the percentage reaches to 84. Bolivia has the lowest mobile coverage, reaching only 45.9% of the country’s population. Argentina has registered a higher mobile penetration than population coverage, with 102.2 mobile phones per 100 inhabitants. At the opposite pole, Peru, Mexico and Brazil exhibit the greatest gap between the population coverage and mobile penetration, the report reveals. Further the report exhibits that nearly seven out of ten countries in Latin America have over 48% prepaid users of the overall mobile lines in service.

In terms of Prepaid subscriptions, Venezuela tops the chart in Latin America with 95% of the total, subsequent to Bolivia with 94.6 percent, Mexico with 90.6 percent, while prepaid users in Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Brazil account for over 80 % of the total subscription in each country.

Source: Wireless Federation.

Argentina, according to the national statistics bureau Indec, ended October with 45.4mn mobile lines in service, up 17.1% since 2007. The mobile telephony traffic rose to 3.50bn calls, a jump of 35.5% since Oct’07.

Source: Wireless Federation.

China has signed up 3.22 million new subscribers in October, less than the average monthly increase of 8.5 million recorded in the initial nine months to September, media reported. At the end of October, China had more than 627.26 million handset users. The slowdown is attributed to the change in operator for the country’s CDMA mobile network, from China Unicom to China Telecom. The total revenue was up 8.1% to CNY 679.79 billion in comparison to the year 2007. The total investment in the telecommunication sector has reached CNY 185.05 billion in the first ten months, up 9.9 percent year-on-year. The total number of telephone users, including both mobile phone users and fixed-line users has crossed the mark of 978.7 million by the end of October.

Source: Wireless Federation.

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.

Telkom Kenya, the new entrant to the Kenyan mobile market, has reportedly signed up 300,000 subscribers in the first three months of its launch. Telkom Kenya targets a subscriber base of 400000 by 2008-end, says CEO Dominique Saint-Jean. After launching it services in Nairobi and Mombasa, it further plans a coverage of five more towns by 2008-end.

Source: Wireless Federation.

South Korea’s leading wireless carrier, gained more customers than its rivals in November, maintaining its lead in the country’s telecom market, according to data released by mobile carriers.

SK Telecom reported that it attracted a net 51,768 customers last month, with its total subscription base increasing to 22.97 million.

KTF Co. ranked second, drawing in a net 35,175 users, bringing its customer base to 14.32 million. The smallest company, LG Telecom Ltd., attracted an additional 22,726 customers, with its total number of customers reaching 8.18 million.

Based on the figures, South Korea had 45.47 million mobile service users out of a population of 49 million as of the end of last month.

Users of KTF’s 3G service, a third-generation wireless service that allows faster data transfers compared to second-generation CDMA-based services, reached 7.97 million as of the end of last month, followed by SK Telecom’s 3G service with 7.88 million subscribers, according to reports.

Source: Wireless Federation.

Velcom posts its third quarter results. The subscriber base reaches to 3.5 million with the net addition of 100,000 new subscribers in third quarter. The 100% owned Telekom Austria subsidiary, reported revenues of EUR82.4 million (USD104.1 million) and EBITDA of EUR41.9 million in the period under review, while its EBITDA margin was stable at 50.8%. The operating income in this quarter was EUR22.7 million. The ARPU grows from EUR6.9 in 2Q08 to EUR7.6 in 3Q08, driven by the launch of new attractively priced tariff plans and currency fluctuations. While, average MOU dipped from 165.8 to 162.8 in the same period.

Source: Wireless Federation.

Anatel, the Brazilian telecoms regulator reports an addition of 4Mn new mobile lines in October’08 experiencing a rise of 2.85% in comparison to September’08. At the end of October, the number of registered active mobile lines reached 145Mn. Of the total mobile subscribers in October, 81.24% were prepaid and 18.76% postpaid.

Teledensity in Brazil went up to 75.2, up by 2.73% since September’08 and 24.5% since October’07.

The leader in mobile market share was Vivo with a market share of 29.7%, compared to 30.0% registered in September. Claro stood at the second place with 25.31%, down from 25.33%, and TIM came third with 24.70%, down from a 25.02% market share the month previous. Oi took the fourth position with registered 16.21% in October from 15.53% in September, while Brasil Telecom came in fifth with 3.67%, compared to 3.73%.

Source: Wireless Federation.

The evergrowing competition in the Kenyan mobile market is expected to take down Safaricom’s market share which will drop from its dominant 80% to 65% in another four years. The fall will be driven by the launch of rival operators, says Chief Executive Michael Joseph.

“We will have between 65% and 70% market share by 2011,” says Michael. The closest competitor to Safaricom is Zain, which has started offering all new lowered tariffs and products, which targets the lower segment of market, which was earlier captured by Safaricom.

The state owned Telkom Kenya is speedily building up its GSM ntwork under the brand name Orange. In order to stay in competition, Safaricom has invested more in data services and is building a WiMax network, to complement its broadband service launched in August this year.

“We are diversifying our revenue streams, with a shift from the voice market. Which is becoming increasingly unattractive, due to the low tariffs, to data,” says Michael. He additionally said that the operator with its broad network can fight the agressive competition.

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.

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.

The Tanzanian TRCA expects in the number of phone users to reach 13 million by H1�Œ09, a rise of 25% and major rise in mobile subscriber base. According to the numbers by the government, the Tanzanian telecoms market has grown by 20.1% in 2007, in comparison to 19.2% a year earlier. �gHardly four years ago we were less than two million. Towards the middle of 2009, we should easily reach 13 million,�h Tanzania Regulatory Authority (TCRA) Director General John Nkoma said. �gWe do expect that by the end of this year, we should be hitting maybe 10.5 million or 11 million. It�fs largely driven by mobile.�h he added. With the end of 2007 Tanzania stood at 8.48 million subscribers, while by H1�Œ08, it had 10.43 million subscribers. TRCA reports a penetration rate of 25% allowing players to enter the nascent telecom market.

Source: Wireless Federation.

­Tanzania Regulatory Authority (TCRA) Director General, John Nkomasays that he expects the number of mobile phone users in the country will jump by 25% to 13 million by the middle of next year.

"Hardly four years ago we were less than two million. Towards the middle of 2009, we should easily reach 13 million," he said.

The regulator awarded two additional licenses last week - to local firms, MyCell and Egotel for both landline and mobile services. Existing operator, Zain was also granted a licence to install an international gateway. There are now five companies licensed to offer international dialing services in the country.

According to figures from the Mobile World subscriber tracker, the country ended the first half of this year with just under 10.1 million customers - representing a population penetration level of 26%.

On the web: Tanzania Regulatory Authority - Mobile World

Source: Cellular News.

In October 2008, for the first time in its history, the Chinese market reported a monthly decline in customer numbers. This was not the latest sign of global economic meltdown, but rather a consequence of China Telecom¡'s acquisition of China Unicom¡'s CDMA network. At the point of acquisition, Unicom counted 41.73m CDMA subscribers while Telecom reported 29.08m, the discrepancy being the result of differing counting methodologies: Telecom disregarded customers who had not paid their most recent bill or who it was not confident would continue to pay in the future. Only 6.8% of the total CDMA customer base were prepaid customers at the end of September, so the vast majority of uncounted customers were on contracts.

The total Chinese customer base remained above 600m despite the inorganic loss effected by China Telecom¡'s recount. With a monthly decline of 4.92m, the number of mobile connections in China stood at 602.25m at the end of October.

Source: Cellular News.

­The Bolivian incumbent Entel reaches a mark of 2 million mobile subscribers in the country. The company's mobile unit Entel Movil has been working on an agressive investment plan since May'08, after the government took over the operator.
According to Sittel, the Bolivian regulator, the country's mobile telephony segment reached 4.4mn subscribers at the end of Q2'08.

Digicel Central America Holdings Limited is owned by Denis O'Brien, as is Digicel Group Limited and Digicel South Pacific Limited.

Source: Cellular News.

According to the telecom supervisory body, Supertel, the Ecuadorian mobile operators ended the month of September with a total of 11.3mn subscribers compared to 9.65mn at end-September 2007.
Porta, a unit of America Movil, continues to top the charts with 7.67mn subscribers, followed by Movistar Ecuador with 2.95mn and locally owned Alegro PCS with 672,366 subscribers.
In the month of September nearly 154,164 subscribers to the Ecuadorian mobile market.

Source: Wireless News.

Dialog Telekom, Sri Lanka’s leading mobile operator by subscribers, reports a fall of 86% in its net profits for 9 months driven by higher energy and network costs and rising inflation. The profits came down to $9.36 million in comparison to $66.38 million since last year. Overall group turnover for the period rose 9% to $249.15 million. It ended the 9 month period with a subscriber base of more than 5 million, acquiring 50% of Sri Lankan mobile market.

Source: Wireless 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.

­Senegal's government has announced that it is to terminate the mobile license of the Tigo mobile phone network - potentially cutting off some 1.8 million customers - at the end of this month. Tigo, which is the trading name of Sentel GSM is a wholy owned subsidiary of Luxembourg based Millicom International Cellular.

Millicom says that the mobile network represents less than 5% of Millicom's world-wide revenues and less than 3% of its EBITDA for the nine months ended September 2008.

Sentel's twenty year license was granted in 1998 by a prior administration, before the enactment in 2002 of Senegal's Telecommunications Act. Although the current Senegalese government has, since 2002, acknowledged the validity of Sentel's license, it has also requested that Sentel renegotiate the terms of the license.

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.

Operator expands to 15 African markets via launches in Kenya, Uganda and Niger

France Telecom-owned Orange has long had a footprint in the predominantly French-speaking areas of West Africa, but this year has seen the operator push into new African markets and seek to exploit its brand profile in the continent.

Orange entered Kenya - East Africa's largest economy - via its US$390 million acquisition of a 51 percent stake in Telkom Kenya in December 2007. The operator subsequently rebranded the company as 'Orange Kenya' and launched operations last month. Orange is targeting 1.5 million customers within a year and claims to be the first 'integrated' operator in the country by combining mobile, fixed-line and Internet services. It has reportedly invested US$110 million in the subsidiary to date – the majority of investment focused on expanding its GSM network. It is using mobile market-leader Safaricom's network to ensure a nationwide service while it builds-out its own infrastructure but expects to cover the whole country within two years. Orange Kenya is the third mobile operator in the market (after Safaricom and Zain), while a fourth player - Econet Wireless Kenya, a specialist 3G operator - plans to launch in the country soon.