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Qatar Telecommunications Report Q4 2010
Business Monitor International, Sep 2010, Pages: 83
Q4 2010 update on the Qatar telecommunications market incorporates H110 data from the country’s two main operators. It also assesses the impact of a number of market developments. This latest update on the Qatar telecommunications market also contains revised five-year forecasts for the country’s mobile subscriber and internet user sectors.
Growth of Qatar’s mobile market has slowed down. In the three months to June 30 2010, the country’s mobile subscriber base expanded by 2.8% quarter-on-quarter (q-o-q). This growth rate contrasts with 5.8% growth in Q110 and 8.1% growth in Q409. The introduction of competition and the launch of commercial services by Vodafone Qatar may well be responsible for this upsurge in customer growth. However, considering Qatar’s extremely high mobile penetration rate, which had reached 167% at the end of June 2010, the authors believe the rates of growth cannot be sustained for much longer.
Assessing the latest figures by Vodafone and Qatari incumbent operator Qtel, the authors predict Qatar’s mobile market will grow by 14.9% in 2010. This will help raise the penetration rate above the 175% mark. This new forecast envisages the rate of growth tailing off more sharply in the latter years of our forecast, falling to just 3.5% in 2014. Growth will partly be supported by Qatar’s expanding population, which is predicted to grow by more than 10% in the five years to 2014.
In May 2010, it was reported that Virgin Mobile Qatar, which is owned by the UK’s Virgin Group, had launched a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) service using Qtel’s network. Virgin Mobile Qatar is the first of the Virgin Mobile operations to launch services in the Middle East. However, the launch of services in Qatar has not been without controversy. In June 2010, it was reported that Vodafone Qatar planned to sue Qtel, the UK’s Virgin Group and the Qatari telecoms regulator over, what it has called, the illegal launch of Virgin Mobile in Qatar.
Other major developments in the Qatari telecoms sector include, the announcement in June, that Qtel planned to upgrade the peak HSPA data download speeds on its mobile network to a theoretical maximum of 42Mbps by the end of 2010. Qtel revealed in August that maximum download speeds had been increased to 21Mbps. By the end of June 2010, Qtel had more than 50,000 mobile broadband subscribers. All these customers were to be given access to the new HSPA download speeds at no extra cost.
Qatar Telecommunications Report provides industry professionals and strategists, corporate analysts, telecommunication associations, government departments and regulatory bodies with independent forecasts and competitive intelligence on Qatar's telecommunications industry.
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