United Kingdom - Mobile - Prepaid and Data Services Overview

Synopsis

The UK is one of the largest and most advanced mobile markets in Europe, with five service providers operating in 2005. 3G licences were issued at the height of the dot com boom, generating over £22 billion for the government, and shackling the licensees with enormous debt. Mobile penetration is above 102% and growing at almost 13% annually. The prepaid card market remains very strong, and has secured between 55% and 80% of the overall market. Orange and T-Mobile had the most customers using prepaid cards in 2005, while the other operators also had a majority of subscribers using this option. This report covers the UK’s prepaid market and also covers non-voice services, which have resumed their strong growth path since mid-2003 with the launch of MMS, GPRS and 3G services.

Table of Contents

• 1. Synopsis
• 2. Mobile voice services
  • 2.1 Prepaid cards
• 3. Mobile data services
  • 3.1 Consumer use of multimedia services
  • 3.2 SMS
    • 3.2.1 Consumer use of SMS
    • 3.2.2 Business use of SMS
  • 3.3 MMS
  • 3.4 Wireless Application Protocol (WAP)
  • 3.5 General Packet Radio Services (GPRS)
  • 3.6 High-Speed Circuit Switched Data (HSCSD)
  • 3.7 Blackberry
  • 3.8 Vodafone Live!
  • 3.9 3G in the UK – 2005
    • 3.9.1 3
    • 3.9.2 Vodafone
    • 3.9.3 T-Mobile UK
    • 3.9.4 O2
    • 3.9.5 Orange UK
• 4. Related reports

• Table 1 – Operator’s prepaid customers – 2003-2005
• Table 2 – Use of mobile multimedia services – 2004
• Table 3 – Mobile value added service revenues - 2003
• Table 4 – Total text messages sent – 1999 – 2005
• Table 5 – Premium SMS market overview - 2004
• Table 6 – Non-voice mobile service usage - 2003 – March 2005
• Table 7 – Total mobile Internet page impressions – 2002 - 2005
• Table 8 – Vodafone Live! customers – 2002 – January 2005