2010 Australia - Fixed & Mobile Telecoms Statistics (tables only)

Fixed market

The industry is preparing itself for the National Broadband Network. While it will be several years before the full impact of the NBN is felt, it will also take several years to change the industry around. Companies will have to reorganise themselves along new markets such as infrastructure and construction; middleware such as data centres, content hosting, cloud computing, OSS/BSS; and retail.

This reorganisation and repositioning is already noticeable in current market activities, where the focus is moving from ARPU to market share. Prices in mobile and fixed broadband have dropped significantly during 2010 as operators try to win as many customers as possible. These customer bases are becoming very valuable and more companies will want to do business with their customers through digital services. The telcos and ISPS are positioning themselves as attractive partners for such developments.

Mobile market

The mobile industry in Australia has changed significantly with the merger of the third and fourth largest mobile network operators Vodafone and Hutchison Australia to form the company VHA. The merger is fundamentally changing the future of the competitive landscape for the industry. If VHA is successful in the longer term the company may challenge both Optus and Telstra in an effort to become the largest service provider in Australia, as Vodafone already is in New Zealand and many other important markets. In the short to medium term VHA will be preoccupied with combining the two businesses but in the longer term the company will be large enough to be able to compete in the mobile infrastructure market as network upgrades are required to provide services in the future.

Prices for both fixed line and mobile calls continue to fall as competition intensifies as a result of competition. Early in the year Telstra dropped its process for mobile broadband significantly, but they still have a long way to go before they can match the competition.

Mobile broadband is the fastest growing mobile telephony service. As prices have fallen lower income customer segments have started to use mobile broadband services, often as a substitute for fixed line household broadband in shared accommodation. Lower prices have also attracted cost-conscious business users to the service which is often used as complementary Internet access.

Data in this report is the latest available at the time of preparation and may not be for the current year.