Emerging markets to drive mobile growth

FORGET BLIGHTY, the top emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China will drive mobile services growth in the coming years, a report by Britain's telecoms regulator Ofcom claims.

It said that these countries will account for 42 percent of the global population but only 14 percent or £120 billion of the global communications industry revenue.

In its International Communications Market 2008 report, Ofcom said that this was "a significant growth opportunity for communications service operators in the future."

China added more mobile phone subscribers in 2007 than Britain has in total, the report said.

It also won more subscribers than the total number of new customers in 12 major countries around the world combined.

Ofcom said that mobile Internet services could be a major growth sector in those emerging markets, noting that in India, five times as many people owned Internet-enabled mobile handsets compared to those who had fixed-line high-speed broadband connections.

It said that there were high expectations that broadband access over wireless will be the main driver of future broadband take-up, not just in India but also in smaller cities and rural areas in Brazil, Russia and China. µ

L'Inq
AP