Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Mobile and Fixed Broadband Switch Roles, Fast

Something interesting has happened in the broadband access business, namely a huge reversal of market share in just several years. Consider that as recently as 2008, some estimates had fixed broadband connections outnumbering mobile broadband by about a four to one margin.

In 2012, the ratio was reversed, and there were four mobile broadband connections in use for every fixed connection. That sort of change--that fast--does not happen in the communications business very often.


The number of mobile broadband subscribers around the world surpassed that of fixed broadband at the end of 2010, in appears. So mobile broadband went from a 20 percent of market state to a 50 percent of market state in just two years, by some estimates.

After about another three years, mobile broadband grew to represent 80 percent of all broadband connections, by some measures. That is a breathtaking change, in terms of the speed of the change.

By 2015, it is anticipated that there will be 3.1 billion mobile broadband subscribers compared to 848 million fixed broadband subscribers.

Global fixed broadband subscriptions reached around 550 million in 2011, mainly boosted by strong growth of DSL in China.

China is the largest single country in terms of fixed broadband subscriptions with around 140 million, followed by the United States and Japan. DSL represents more than 60 percent of all fixed broadband subscriptions followed by cable and Fiber-To-The-Home/Building (FTTH/B). 


The high growth rate of mobile broadband means that mobile broadband, if it has not already grown to represent 80 percent of total broadband subscriptions, will have done so by 2015 or so.

In emerging markets, mobile broadband is expected to increase from 37 to 79 percent of all broadband subscriptions between 2010 and 2015.

The growth of mobile broadband is not news. But what might be more shocking is the growth rate and the size of the installed base. Rarely does mobile substitution for fixed services happen so fast.

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