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Norway Telecommunications Report Q3 2011
Business Monitor International, June 2011, Pages: 93
The Norway Telecommunications Report provides industry professionals and strategists, corporate analysts, telecommunication associations, government departments and regulatory bodies with independent forecasts and competitive intelligence on Norway's telecommunications industry.
The Q311 Norway Telecommunications Report contains the latest forecasts depicting how the country's mobile, fixed-line, broadband, internet and 3G subscriber markets will develop in the five years to 2015. There have been no significant developments in the country's fixed-line and broadband sectors, so we have again left our forecasts unchanged, believing they represent an accurate picture of how Norway's different telecoms market sectors are progressing. Our current forecasts are based on H110 data published by Norway's regulator, the Norwegian Post and Telecommunications Authority, and Q111 data published by the country's principal network operators, namely the national incumbent operator Telenor and TeliaSonera-backed NetCom.
Based on the available data, the anslyst estimates Norway had about 5.580mn mobile subscribers at the end of 2010 and a penetration rate of 114%. The operators and many of their reseller partners recorded a very weak Q410 and this trend continued into Q111 with a number of customer base reductions seen. This underlines our long-held view that saturation of the market is close at hand and that operators focusing on customer acquisition strategies will be less successful than those looking to retain customers and enhance their value proposition. We expect Norway's network operators to continue emphasising the development of 3G, 3.5G and 4G services as a way of driving future growth.
A key development was the April 2011 announcement that Hi3G Access, holder of the country's third 3G licence, had handed that licence back to the authorities as it no longer saw any commercially viable opportunities in the market. Hi3G had been reluctant to invest in network construction and, even with an extension to its rollout obligations, it was always highly likely that it would simply write off its limited investment. While Hi3G Access' withdrawal leaves more room for 2G/3G licensee Mobile Norway to manoeuvre, continued delays in rolling out its network and services suggest that it, too, may find little commercial value in building Norway's third mobile network. Its licence requires a commercial launch by July 2012, but the analyst increasingly thinks it will eventually come to grief or reposition itself as an infrastructure supplier.
The mobile operators are also finding it increasingly difficult to grow ARPUs, despite concentrating on growing their higher-value postpaid subscriber bases. Reduced mobile termination rates (MTRs) and network interconnection fees - key revenue-generators - have resulted in reduced service revenues and, as Telenor and NetCom continue shedding inactive prepaid customers, so blended ARPU values have continued to fall. We suspect that the proportion of data within ARPUs is increasing, but the operators are careful not disclose such information, so we cannot be certain that an increased focus on VAS and bundling of additional services and products is paying off.
Norway moved back from fifth to seventh position in the analsyt updated Business Environment Ratings for Western Europe in Q311. Its Country Risks rating did increase appreciably this quarter, but was offset by much lower scores for Industry Rewards and Country Rewards, which this meant that its overall score decreased.
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