Explosive mobile broadband growth

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Penetration in Asia-Pacific breaches 50%

KUALA LUMPUR: Mobile broadband penetration in the region is experiencing explosive growth with penetration having breached 50%.

According to Frost & Sullivan senior vice-president for information and communications technology (ICT) practice Nitin Bhat, the region is currently in its late growth phase where mobile penetration has breached 50% but broadband uptake remained limited.

He said the region had seen High Growth Era from 2002 to 2006 where growth was driven by mobile voice, fixed broadband and short messaging system (SMS).

The region was now experiencing the Late Growth Era from 2007 to 2011 where growth would continue to be driven by voice, fixed broadband and VAS (value -added service) offering.
 

“By the end of 2008, 25% of the region’s mobile devices were Internet-enabled, with 14% being 2.5G enabled and 9% 3G enabled.

“We expect this number to increase dramatically by 2014 when 47% of the region’s device will be able to receive an Internet connection,” Bhat said his presentation at the 2009 Mobile Broadband Asia Pacific Summit yesterday.

He said newer mobile broadband technologies would open new avenues for growth in Asia’s wireless markets but cautioned operators to be careful amid a global recession to ensure that new services and applications would be successful with customers as well as profitable.

While Bhat expects mobile broadband penetration to grow in Malaysia, he did not expect mobile broadband subscribers to supersede fixed broadband.

“It is not the case in Malaysia. It is difficult to imagine that it (mobile broadband) will overtake fixed broadband within two years,” he said, adding that there were about 1.3 million fixed broadband subscribers currently.

He pointed out that many fixed broadband subscribers had a dual connection. Moreover, he said Telekom Malaysia Bhd was spearheading the high-speed broadband project.

“I think it could be possible in four years,” he said.

He added that the growth may slow given that mobile broadband penetration had grown tremendously the past two years.

To a question, Bhat said the broadband pricing was already competitive but was still higher compared with other countries in the region.

“There could be a downtrend in mobile and fixed broadband pricing but I don’t think they can reduce much. However, any form of competition will drive the price down especially with the entrance of new players”.

Frost & Sullivan senior industry analyst ICT practice (Asia-Pacific) Marc Einstein said mobile broadband had finally evolved to a level where it could compete with fixed broadband solutions for the first time.

“We are starting to see wireless operators in Asia-Pacific accelerate fixed-to-mobile substitution for wireless date services.

“While this is certainly an exciting development, mobile broadband services are still evolving with 4G services on the horizon which will open doors to even more ubiquitous mobile broadband use in new areas like machine-to-machine communications, healthcare applications, remote monitoring and security,” he added.

Source: The Star