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Sweden Telecommunications Report Q1 2011
Business Monitor International, Feb 2011, Pages: 100
The Sweden Telecommunications Report provides industry professionals and strategists, corporate analysts, telecommunication associations, government departments and regulatory bodies with independent forecasts and competitive intelligence on Sweden's telecommunications industry.
BMI’s Q111 report on Sweden’s telecommunications market contains latest data published by the country’s incumbent operator TeliaSonera, as well as Sweden-based pan-European operator Tele2 and Norwegian incumbent operator Telenor for the period ended September 2010. In addition, included in this quarterly update is latest data for the fixed-line and broadband markets as published by the regulator for the period ended June 2010. This has led us to revise upwards our forecasts for the country’s mobile and fixed-line markets.
Although mobile penetration rates are well over 131%, the first nine months of 2010 revealed stronger take up than the same period in the previous year. Some 522,000 net additions were reported between YE09 and September 2010, as compared to 459,000 new customers in 9M09. BMI believes that this is the result of growing demand for 3G services. Latest regulatory data suggests that the number of 3G subscribers rose by 50% to reach 6.254mn as of June 2010, and that much of this was boosted by demand for mobile broadband subscribers. There were a total of 1.532mn mobile broadband subscribers, up by 39% y-o-y.
BMI’s expectation of the 3G mobile market is that 59.1% of the total mobile market will be made up of 3G subscribers by YE10, compared to 51% in June 2010. The rate of take up will continue to be supported by the greater smart phone penetration, cheaper data packages and the introduction of long term evolution (LTE). In November 2010, Net4Mobility, a JV owned by mobile operators Tele2 and Telenor, made good their plans to roll out a commercial LTE network before the end of the year. The new network, which has gone live in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmo and Karlkrona, is expected to cover 99% of the population by the end of 2012. By that time, BMI estimates that the majority of the total mobile market will be on 3G services.
In terms of the fixed line market, the decline in demand is representative of the continued demand for alternative services, which are both cheaper and more convenient to access such as mobile and VoIP. There were a total of 5.014mn fixed lines in June 2010 representing a 4% y-o-y decline. Of note is that while overall demand for fixed lines fell, much of this related to PSTN and ISDN lines, while demand for IP-based telephony increased. To a certain degree this would suggest that the decline actually represents a shift in the type of connection, rather than a permanent loss of subscribers.
Meanwhile, there were a total of 4.778mn internet subscribers as of June 2010 following a y-o-y increase of 8% and led by fibre and mobile broadband connections, which were up by 15% and 39% respectively. While xDSL accounted for the bulk of connections at 1.633mn, this represented a decline of 4% y-o-y and is in danger of being overtaken by mobile broadband, which had a total of 1.532mn subscribers.
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