Massive growth in mobile broadband

Peter Dinham
Thursday, 23 July 2009 10:16

Your IT - Home IT

Mobile broadband usage has surged over the past year, with subscribers to the services nearing a quarter of a billion globally and the industry recording year-on-year growth of 93 percent.

Figures just released show that there were more  than 225 million mobile broadband subscribers, for all technologies, at the end of March, with the popularity of mobile broadband remaining at its highest in the Asia Pacific with 90 million subscribers in the region.

According to Informa Telecoms & Media’s latest world cellular Data metrics report, on the extent of non-voice mobile revenues and usage, mobile broadband services continue to be an important source of growth for mobile operators, both as a revenue generator and as a way of retaining customers in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

Informa says that, whilst the popularity of mobile broadband remained at its highest in Asia Pacific, growth was most notable in Latin America, with a whopping 385% year-on-year growth to over 10 million subscribers.

Informa’s principal analyst for growth markets, Nick Jotischky, says that typically in many emerging markets, fixed broadband access remains limited and mobile operators are “seeing the opportunity to use recently deployed third-generation networks as a way of diversifying their revenue streams by connecting millions for whom an internet connection has until recently been out of reach.”

According to Jotischky, the evolution of the device market has also contributed to a surge in mobile data traffic, with Informa estimating that the increased usage in non-voice services has resulted in mobile operators recording total data revenues of US$46.5billion during the first quarter this year, representing an 8.5 percent year-on-year increase on the corresponding period in 2008.

The value of the non-voice market for the whole of 2008 was over US$180 billion, accounting for over 20% of total service revenues.

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