­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

In North America, Netflix is now 29.7 percent of peak downstream traffic and has become the largest source of internet traffic overall, according to a study by broadband equipment provider Sandvine. Currently, real-time entertainment applications consume 49.2 percent of peak aggregate traffic, up from 29.5 percent in 2009, a 60 percent increase.

Sandvine forecasts that the real-time entertainment category will represent 55-60 percent of peak aggregate traffic by the end of this year. In Latin America, social networking (overwhelmingly Facebook) is a bigger source of traffic than YouTube, representing almost 14 percent of network traffic. Real-time entertainment represents 27.5 percent of peak aggregate traffic, still the largest contributor of traffic in that region. In Europe, real-time entertainment continues a steady climb, rising to 33.2 percent of peak aggregate traffic, up from 31.9 percent last fall. BitTorrent is the largest single component of both upstream (59.7 percent) and downstream (21.6 percent) internet traffic during peak periods. In the UK, BBC's iPlayer is 6.6 percent of peak downstream traffic, reflecting the demand for localised content in many markets.

Overall, individual subscribers in Europe consume twice the amount of data as North Americans.

Source: TelecomPaper

­Around one text billion messages were sent in China's capital, Beijing last Wednesday on the eve of the Spring Festival - or Chinese New Year, but the flood of greetings actually caused complaints from recipients saying there were too many.

China Mobile said its Beijing users sent 770 million text messages that night, which was up about 13 percent year-on-year. China Unicom reported over 143 million messages, and it is estimated that China Telecom made up the remaining 80 million.

China Mobile's Shanghai users sent 920 million text messages on the same day, up 20 percent, while in Guangdong province, the number of messages sent Wednesday night went up by over 23 percent year-on-year, a report by the semi-official China Daily newspaper claimed.

"God knows how many text messages I received on Spring Festival Eve, it must have been over a hundred. I even received many from people I don't even know," Yin Ni, who runs an online store in Beijing, was quoted as saying.

"I never send such messages because I don't consider pressing the button saying 'send message to all contacts' is sincere. People should realize that the only beneficiaries are the mobile phone operators," said Yin.

This year is the Year of the Rabbit. In Mandarin, the word "rabbit" is pronounced the same as the word "to" in English, so "Happy to you" has become one of the most popular greetings this year.

Source: Cellular News

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 US trade body, the CTIA has published the findings of its semi-annual industry survey, which includes numerous positive metrics on the industry’s continued growth and popularity. In particular, wireless revenues showed impressive year-to year gains, as wireless data service revenues for the year 2008 rose to more than $32 billion. This represents a 39% increase over 2007, when data revenues totaled $23.2 billion. Wireless data revenues for 2008 amounted to nearly 22% of all wireless service revenues, and represent what consumers spend on non-voice services.

Source: Cellular News.

Skype’s share of international long-distance traffic, 2008:

New data from TeleGeography show that international voice traffic continues to rise, despite the availability of an ever-broader range of substitutes for standard telephone calls. Cross-border telephone traffic grew 14% in 2007 and is estimated to have grown 12% in 2008, to 384 billion minutes. Due to declining call prices, however, revenues have largely been flat.

Source: TeleGeography.

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.

The Chilean regulator Subtel proposes a 52% cut in mobile connection fees in order to use each other’s lines for the next five years, driven by low costs and high user traffic. The government will set new access rates for 2009-2014 before the current period expires; under the new proposals a figure of $0.07/minute would be imposed, much lower than the $0.133-$0.136 currently charged by the incumbent operators Entel PCS, Telefonica and America Movil.

‘We are deeply surprised by the government’s proposal for a more than 50% rate cut, which does not seem reasonable, especially in light of the prevailing uncertainty and the still unknown magnitude and depth of the economic crisis,’ Entel said in a statement. The company said it would request an expert commission be formed to arrive at a proposal that ‘does not jeopardise the achievements of the industry to date.’

Source: Wireless Federation.

Mobile network operators in developed regions should prepare for a tenfold increase in wireless network traffic by 2015, as data traffic rapidly overtakes voice, according to the latest report entitled Wireless network traffic 2008-2015: forecasts and analysis from Analysys Mason, the premier advisers on telecoms, IT and digital media.

Total wireless network traffic from cellular users in developed regions is set to increase substantially, driven by, improved cellular devices (such as USB modems and smartphones); widespread deployment of advanced 3G technologies and femtocells; affordable pricing (particularly for traffic-intensive services); more indoor usage of cellular devices; and increasing size of items of Web content.

For more information please visit www.analysysmason.com

About Wireless Federation

Wireless Federation is an industry research conglomerate headquartered in London, United Kingdom. The mandate of the Wireless Federation is to provide its members and customers industry knowledge that can further enhance their understanding of the wireless industry. Wireless Federation conducts bespoke research and produces boxed reports in collabaration with Industry Bodies, Telecom Operators for Issues that revolve around ARPU, CHURN and Loyalty.
They have been associated with more than 225 mobile operators globally to set their Pricing/ Tariff Strategies, Go-To-Market Strategies for Mobile Advertising, Mobile Payments, Cutting VAS among others amongst 59 countries globally.

Source: Wireless Federation.

­The UK's Mobile Data Association (MDA) has reported that new devices and an ever growing variety of mobile applications have driven overall mobile data growth figures in 2008. SMS growth continues to astound while MMS shows an increasing level of growth. Consumer awareness, the fact that nearly all phones now come ready configured to work with MMS and attractive tariff bundles from the Mobile Network Operators helps fuel this growth.

Source: Cellular News.

According to new data from TeleGeography, international Internet traffic grew 53% between mid-2007 and mid-2008, down from 61% the preceding year. Traffic growth between the US and Latin America was especially fast, surging 112%. In contrast, traffic on internet backbones between major cities in the relatively more mature US market rose a modest 47%.

For the second consecutive year, total international Internet capacity grew faster than total Internet traffic, leading to lower utilisation levels on many internet backbones. Between 2007 and 2008 average traffic utilisation levels decreased from 31% to 29%, while peak utilisation fell from 44% to 43%. The aggregate trend toward lower utilisation of capacity belies significant regional differences. While utilisation on international links to Europe and Asia fell in 2008, they rose in the US & Canada and Latin American where traffic growth outpaced the deployment of new internet bandwidth.

Traffic growth has remained strong, even though the pace of broadband subscriber growth has declined. 'Broadband subscriber growth has been slowing since 2001, but the volume of traffic generated by each user grown,' said TeleGeography Director of Research Alan Mauldin. 'Traffic growth is fueled by consumer demand for video, delivered via web browsers, peer-to-peer services, or streaming protocols.'

TeleGeography's Global Internet Geography provides in-depth analysis of international and US domestic Internet backbone capacity, traffic and pricing.

To download the executive summary of TeleGeography's Global Internet Geography study, please visit: http://www.telegeography.com/products/gig/index.php.

Source: TeleGeography.

New data from the annual TeleGeography study of the international voice market shows that international traffic growth slowed sharply in 2006, to 10%, the lowest level in more than 20 years. Since prices are falling while competition and complexity are continuing to grow, international carriers may be in for a rough ride in the coming years.

However, not all is bleak: cross-border VoIP traffic grew more than 30% in 2006, and VoIP emerged as the key driver of overall market growth. In fact, 2006 may have been a tipping point in the international market: VoIP traffic increased as much as TDM volumes, and VoIP is poised to overtake TDM traffic growth in 2007.

Source: Telegeography.

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

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