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Qatar Telecommunications Report Q1 2011
Business Monitor International, Dec 2010, Pages: 80
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.
BMI’s Q1 2011 update on the Qatar telecoms market incorporates data from the country’s two main operators for the first nine months of 2010. It also assesses the impact of a number of market developments. Our latest update on the Qatar telecoms market also contains our five-year forecasts for the country’s mobile, fixed-line and internet sectors, which have been extended to 2015.
The rate of subscriber uptake in Q310 supports our earlier position in our previous report that growth of Qatar’s mobile market has slowed down. In the three months to September 30 2010, the country’s mobile subscriber base expanded by just 1.4% quarter-on-quarter (q-o-q). This growth rate contrasts with 2.8% growth in Q210 and 18.1% growth in Q309. BMI attributed the upsurge in customer growth in the second half of 2009 to the introduction of competition and the launch of commercial services by Vodafone Qatar. However, considering Qatar’s extremely high mobile penetration rate, which is expected to reach 188% at the end of December 2010, BMI believes the rates of growth cannot be sustained for much longer.
Assessing the latest figures by Vodafone and Qatari incumbent operator Qtel, BMI predicts Qatar’s mobile market will grow by 15.1% in 2010. Our updated forecast envisages the rate of growth tailing off more sharply in the latter years of our forecast, falling to just 3.3% in 2015. Growth will be partly supported by Qatar’s expanding population, which is predicted to grow by more than 10% in the five years to 2015.
In May 2010 Virgin Mobile Qatar, which is owned by the UK’s Virgin Group, had reportedly launched a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) service using Qtel’s network. Although the launch of Virgin Mobile’s operations was trailed by controversy, the MVNO is pushing ahead with its strategy to capture a considerable portion of the youth market with a range of contemporary value-added services and promotions targeting young users. Virgin Mobile regards the success of the Qatari venture as a possible launch pad into other Middle East mobile markets.
Other major developments in the Qatari telecoms sector include the announcement in September 2010 that Vodafone had started integrating its mobile and fixed networks in preparation for the commercial launch of fixed services. Vodafone also announced that 100% of the population were covered by its 2G network, while its 3G network achieved 98% population coverage. In June 2010 Qtel announced plans 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.
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