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Canada Telecommunications Report Q4 2011
Business Monitor International, Oct 2011, Pages: 98
The Canadian telecommunications market continues to grow at a steady pace, with mobile broadband adoption providing the principal force. Fixed-line, fixed broadband, pay TV, and general mobile subscriber growth rates for H111 were within expectations, so we have refrained from revising most of our forecasts in this quarterly update.
Demand for smartphones, mobile multimedia devices and flexible data packages have boosted mobile broadband usage considerably in the last 18 months, more so than previously expected. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) states that there were 10mn mobile broadband subscribers at the end of 2010, a massive increase from just 2.6mn a year earlier. The regulator's data appear to be corroborated by a statement from the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA) that there had been nearly 6mn mobile broadband subscribers by mid-2010.
Mobile market leader Rogers regularly reports the activation of more than half a million new smartphones every quarter, while rivals Telus and Bell are also thought to be seeing similarly large numbers of broadband devices joining their networks. At the same time, the country's newest mobile operators – Wind Mobile, Public Mobile, Mobilicity, and Vidéotron – are all reporting brisk subscriber growth, likely due to their offers of heavily subsidised smartphones alongside affordable data plans. We have, therefore, raised our 3G and broadband subscriber forecasts to take account of this new information. BMI forecasts the Canadian 3G subscriber base to rise from 4.7mn in 2011 to 11.1mn by 2015. 3G subscribers will represent 36.3% of the Canadian mobile market by 2015, despite the fact that 3G/3.5G W-CDMA/HSPA networks already cover more than 96% of the population. Rogers and Bell have already launched 4G LTE-based networks and SaskTel announced in September 2011 that it would begin migrating to LTE, too. MTS and Telus also have plans to move to LTE as soon as possible, so it seems likely that the number of 'pure' 3G subscribers will remain relatively small as the emphasis switches to the higher-capacity platforms.
Incorporating the much higher 2010 figure for mobile broadband into our forecasts yields a revised end- 2010 broadband subscriber figure of 20.1mn. We believe that mobile broadband will increasingly cannibalise – though not completely replace – demand for fixed broadband services. Therefore, we have adjusted our broadband subscriber growth rates accordingly, We now expect there to be 24.3mn broadband subscribers by end-2011, a figure that will rise to 33.1mn by 2015. Mobile broadband will likely account for two-thirds of the market by then.
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