2010 Global - Key Telecoms, Mobile and Broadband Statistics

Global Telecoms in Statistics

The vibrant global telecommunications industry has faced many challenges over the last decade including regulatory and technology changes, a severe industry downturn, consolidation, market saturation, declining prices and major inroads by mobile services.

In recent times the focus has been primarily on surviving the economic downturn. While the various sectors that comprise the global telecommunications industry have been impacted upon in different ways; as a whole the industry has been quite resilient when compared to some other industries such as automotive, retail and travel.

In particular, growth in the mobile and fixed broadband sectors has continued and mobile subscriber penetration now sits at around 70% on a global level. The use of mobile data and mobile broadband services has also grown due to capped data packages, strong competition, smart phones and increased 3G penetration.

The next phase of mobile technology and services rests upon the development of wireless broadband and in particular the 4G technology, Long-term evolution (LTE). In the interim however, mobile users continue to utilise the 3G and 3.5G (HSPA) services on offer and there are around 650 million 3G/3.5G subscribers worldwide.

In 2010 almost 25% of the global population will use the Internet. Future growth of Internet users is expected from countries with large populations such as India, the Russian Federation and China; which are already showing signs of significant growth.

The financial crisis has led to global attention focusing on high-speed broadband based on Fibre-to-the- Home (FttH) and deployments are expected to grow steadily for at least the next five years. This is due to a growing recognition, particularly amongst government bodies, that broadband does not only offer high-speed Internet services; it is also important for national infrastructure and will underpin a range of positive social and economic developments.

There is no doubt that the next ten years will bring further exiting developments to the increasingly vital telecommunications industry. The foundations for change are already in motion and the continuing deployment of high-speed broadband and developments relating to 4G technology will provide the infrastructure to ignite the new innovations and revolutions of the future.

This report provides a valuable overview of the dynamic global telecoms sector. The report includes key global telecoms statistics such as the number of fixed lines; mobile subscribers; 3G-4G subscribers; text messages; handset sales; Internet users; broadband subscribers; VoIP and mobile broadband statistics. Also provided are broad statistics on worldwide telecoms capital expenditure (CAPEX), overall telecoms spending and revenues and key satellite services statistics. Information on the top 25 carriers’ worldwide and top 15 carriers in emerging markets is also provided along with outsourcing and MVNO market statistics.

Market highlights:

• The global telecoms industry numbers have become impressive and there are now billions of mobile and fixed connections worldwide.
• In terms of sales, AT&T, Verizon and NTT have been the global top 3 publicly listed carriers since at least 2007.
• The resilient mobile industry is still growing despite the challenges and overall global mobile revenues are predicted to reach over $1 trillion around 2012.
• While 3G technology has made inroads; the 2G GSM technology retains the largest market share with well over 4 billion subscribers worldwide.

 Forecast worldwide telecom statistics at a glance – 2010

(Source: BuddeComm forecasts, 2010)

• Handset sales in Q1 2010 were higher than expected, due to a strong growth in global smart phone sales and also the continuing uptake of unbranded low cost mobile devices in emerging markets.
• China is the world’s largest mobile communications market. The number of mobile subscribers in China surpassed the number of fixed-line subscribers in 2003.
• The high costs of data services, inadequate network speeds and inferior mobile interfaces initially held the mobile broadband/data market back. But as some of these issues are slowly resolved; the mobile broadband market is finally gaining momentum.
• By the end of 2010 there will be well over 500 million broadband subscribers worldwide (including all fixed access technologies). While Japan continues to lead the world in terms of the number of FTTx subscribers; South Korea has the highest penetration in the world and is the first country in the world to reach over 50% penetration of households using FTTx.

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