Telecom Lead India: Mobile Internet will account for 19
percent of India’s mobile service revenues in 2012. India has 10 million HSPA
connections across the country.
Recently, GSMA announced that India will become
the second largest mobile broadband market globally within the next four years
with 367 million mobile broadband connections by 2016.
China and India are the fastest growing telecom markets
in the world. Mobile Internet will represent 25 percent of China’s mobile
revenues in 2012, up from less than 23 percent in 2011, according to ABI
Research.
Asia Pacific’s more advanced markets are Japan with 40
percent mobile Internet revenues and Hong Kong at 44 percent.
COAI urges all mobile operators to support 4G auction
Recently, COAI urged all mobile service providers to
participate in 4G LTE auction during the current financial year.
According to GSMA, India will overtake the US, which will
account for 337 million mobile broadband connections by 2016, but will still be
second to China, which will have reached 639 million mobile broadband
connections in the same period.
GSMA said there are now more than 10 million HSPA
connections across the country, and this is expected to grow by 900 percent, to
more than 100 million connections in 2014. This will make India the largest
HSPA market worldwide within the next two years, surpassing China, Japan and
the US in the process.
It’s in carriers’ interests to become part of the Internet
value chain from early on. Strategic choices, such as those seen in Indonesia,
can give operators a more integral role in defining the customer experience in
a time when the local digital landscape is still being shaped up. Moreover,
such moves also allow them to gain valuable mindshare among local content
providers and app developers,” said Aapo Markkanen, senior analyst, ABI
Research.
In Indonesia, Telkom offers its customers a music
streaming service, in association with SK Telecom, which has utilized a similar
service to drive data uptake in Korea.
XL Axiata has partnered with Blaast, a cloud technology
vendor, to set up a cloud-based platform that enables feature-phone users to
benefit from an smartphone-like mobile apps.
ABI Research said in the low-margin environments of the
emerging APAC, mobile operators should encourage users to migrate to data
subscriptions and thus minimize the growing pains related to the 3G and 4G
expansion.
Early-adopting smartphone owners typically generate far
higher data traffic volumes than users that follow them. If an operator relies
solely on the natural early adopters as the first source of data revenue, it
will have to recover the capital expenditure longer than a rival that
proactively develops itself a long tail of lower-income data subscribers,” said
Jake Saunders, vice president of forecasting.
editor@telecomlead.com
