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Oman Telecommunications Report Q1 2012
Business Monitor International, Dec 2011, Pages: 91
Oman Telecommunications Report provides industry professionals and strategists, corporate analysts, telecommunication associations, government departments and regulatory bodies with independent forecasts and competitive intelligence on Oman's telecommunications industry.
During this quarter’s update to BMI’s Oman Telecommunications report we have extended our five year growth forecast for the mobile, fixed-line and internet sectors to 2016. Our analysis and forecast is based on regulatory and operator data for the second quarter of 2011. It also includes updates to our mobile ARPU forecast as well as analysis of recent regulatory and industry development expect to affect the telecoms market.
Based on operational data published by Omantel and Nawras as well as subscriber figures for MVNO’s published by the regulator, BMI estimates there were 4.565mn mobile subscribers in Oman at the end of June 2011, a penetration rate of 154%. The mobile market in Oman contracted by 0.9% during H111, following subscriber net losses by Omantel and Nawras in Q111 and by Nawras alone in Q211. BMI attributes this to the stricter enforcement of the regulator’s directive for the disconnection of inactive lines. Although total MVNO subscriptions continue to record positive growth, BMI notes that net additions of MVNO subscribers in Q111 and Q211 were significantly less than the average quarterly net additions during 2010.
In view of the market contraction in H111 we have downgraded our mobile growth forecast for 2011. We now expect the market to grow by 5.7% during 2011, considerably less that a 16.2% y-o-y growth rate recorded in 2010. By 2016 we expect Oman’s mobile subscriber base to reach 5.386mn, reflecting a penetration rate of 173.3%. We retain our view that network operators will focus more on migrating their existing prepaid subscribers unto higher value postpaid services in order to drive revenue growth. According to regulatory data, postpaid subscriptions accounted for just 9.1% of total mobile subscriptions at the end June 2011.
There was a significant uptick in mobile and internet ARPUs in Oman duringH111. We believe this is related to increased usage of telecoms services, especially fixed and mobile data, at the peak of the political crisis across many countries in the region. We also believe the increasing availability of dataenabled devices such as smartphones and tablet computers contributed to the increased usage of internet services in the country. For the fixed segment, fixed-line ARPU (prepaid and postpaid) largely remained flat while payphone ARPU increased marginally during H111.
Oman’s internet sector continues to record strong subscriber growth, driven by the mobile broadband segment. According to the TRA, there were 2.198mn 3G subscribers and 75,139 fixed internet (broadband and dial-up) subscribers in Oman at the end of June 2011. BMI forecast internet and broadband penetration in Oman to reach 89.3% and 44.5% respectively by the end of 2016. Meanwhile, the number of fixed-line connections continues to fluctuate from quarter to quarter. However, we believe it is in a general downtrend and expect the fixed-line penetration rate to drop from 9.7% at the end of 2010 to 8.1% by 2016.
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