The total number of mobile connections in North America rose to 277.90m at the end of Q1 08, from 257.60m a year earlier. The penetration rate saw a 5.3pp gain to 82.5%. Obviously this figure is close to the 84.9% penetration rate in the USA, the region's largest market by some distance with 92.7% of North America's mobile customers, although it is dragged down by the low Canadian rate of just 60.5%.The other two markets in the region are so small as to have little bearing on the total penetration rate. St. Pierre et Miquelon, a group of small islands off Newfoundland which are an overseas territory of France, had 2,935 mobile customers at the end of Q1 08, and a penetration rate of 41.7%. Meanwhile, Greenland was the region's most penetrated market by some distance with 96.9% of the population owning a mobile phone, which amounts to around 55k connections.

By far the fastest growing technology in North America is W-CDMA, which saw a 336.7% gain in customers in the 12 months ending 31st March 2008. The total number of W-CDMA connections surpassed the 10m mark during Q1 08 to finish the quarter on 11.12m. This is still below the number of iDEN customers, which stood at 16.56m at the end of Q1, but with iDEN losing 5.09m customers year on year and W-CDMA gaining 8.57m, it seems likely that iDEN will lose its status as North America's third most important technology before the end of 2008.

CDMA remains the dominant standard with 52.7% of the total North American customer base, or 146.49m connections, up from 130.6m (50.7% of the total) a year earlier.

The number of GSM connections broke through the 100m barrier to reach 103.7m at the end of Q1, but growth more than halved from 15.0% in the 12 months to the end of Q1 07, to 7.0% in the subsequent 12 months, as a consequence of the success of W-CDMA. Annual CDMA customer growth was also down compared to the prior twelve months with a 4.4pp fall in the rate, although it remained in double digits with a 12.2% yearly gain.

The total customer growth rate also fell compared to the prior 12 months, from 11.6% to 7.9%. This is the lowest rolling annual growth rate ever recorded in the North American region, and we fully expect it to be the lowest rate of any region in the world in Q1 08.

Source: Cellular News.

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

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

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

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

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

Source: Cellular News .

The OECD published a paper reviewing available official statistics on trust and security in the online environment. It discusses whether security concerns are an obstacle to Internet use and examines how people and companies protect their equipment and networks. Download the report from OECD webiste (pdf).

Source: OECD .