Australian company Big Mobile has partnered with News Digital Media, Optus, and Vodafone Hutchison Australia, to represent platforms including news.com.au, moshtix, TrueLocal, Planet 3, Vodafone live!, and Optus Zoo, with a total audience reach said to be over 4 million unique users.
Commonwealth Bank, Fitness First, McDonald’s, Domino’s, and Sanitarium have already conducted mobile ad campaigns through the company.
BuddeComm has updated its entire range of Africa market reports and comes to the following conclusions:
For more information, see BuddeComm’s range of Africa reports:
South Africa is making a significant contribution globally towards the growth of social networking portals. Research by Sysmos indicates that South African users made up 0.85% of the total interaction on Twitter in 2009 which makes them the eighth largest sample population globally, accounting for roughly 470,000 of the website’s monthly user base of 55 million. South Africa has more Twitter users than Japan, China, Spain and the Netherlands. The largest user group is in the US, which accounts for more than 60% of Twitter’s active membership.
South Africans also represented 1.9 million of the 300 million Facebook users in 2009, placing the country in the 25th position globally. Their number has grown by over 100% during 2009, making South Africa one of the fastest growing markets worldwide.
For more information, see BuddeComm’s updated report:
Given that it is regional Australia we have to thank for taking the initiative to highlight the need for the NBN, it puzzles me that since the plans for the NBN were announced there has been utter silence from those early supporters of a first-class telecoms network for the bush. As a consequence NBN Co, which has an already overloaded program, is more than happy not to make regional Australia a priority.
Where are the Barnaby Joyces and Fiona Nashes, who championed this cause during the mid-00s? They deserve full credit for having played a key role in getting us the NBN in the first place, but where are they now, at the critical time of implementation?
At the start of the current version of the NBN I argued that NBN Co could have some early wins by using wireless technologies to provide regional Australia with a head-start – even if some of that technology were to eventually be replaced by fibre networks.
True, there are design and architecture issues to tackle but if regional Australia had kept up the pressure they most certainly would have been among the first cabs off the rank.
It looks as though those who advocated regional broadband were, in the end, more interested in their own politics than in the welfare of their regional communities.
The Liberal Opposition has made the issue a political one and ignores the fact that there is basically universal support for the NBN. They dismiss the NBN outright, without even trying to come up with a positive contribution to the debate on this national infrastructure development. The Nationals seem to have been caught in the negative political web also, and they are now seriously letting their regional constituents down. There certainly has not been a decrease in interest from regional Australia; however it is in desperate need of champions – otherwise they will simply remain at the end of the long NBN queue.
Paul Budde
For further information see:
Australia – National Broadband Network – Competition and Regulations
Australia – National Broadband Network – Deployment Strategies
Australia – National Broadband Network – Early Projects
Australia – National Broadband Network – Government’s Trans-Sector Conference
Australia – National Broadband Network – Industry at crossroads
Australia – National Broadband Network – NBN Co and Infrastructure
Australia – National Broadband Network – Overview and Analysis
Australia – National Broadband Network – Telstra
Australia – National Broadband Network based on Trans-sector model
Australia – National Broadband Network Municipal Networks
Australia – National Broadband Network Trans-sector projects
The retail clause in the proposed NBN Co legislation is exactly what is needed to guarantee that the NBN can be used to deliver the national social and economic benefits that BuddeComm (along with others) envisaged in the very early days, when they were involved in the strategic plans behind what is now the NBN.
Throughout the debate around the development of the NBN it is crucial to keep the focus on why we are building this infrastructure in the first place, and why we are spending taxpayer dollars on it.
From the outset BuddeComm clearly identified that a trans-sector approach was required. The NBN infrastructure should be used for the delivery of a range of services such as healthcare, education, public safety applications and energy and environmental apps such as smart grids. If the NBN were to be built for commercial services, like high-speed Internet, delivery would cost an exorbitant $200 plus per month per user. So, from an economic point of view also, it is essential that we ensure the infrastructure is used trans-sectorally.
The OECD had identified the delivery of health, energy and transport services over high-speed networks as key benefits to support the accelerated deployment of high-speed broadband networks by governments. This concept is now receiving such widespread support that I am currently working with the UN to move this trans-sector concept up into international telecoms policies.
The Australian government has been an international leader here; from the beginning it clearly stated that the NBN should be used for non-commercial applications. At the same time we also know that if the NBN is not made available to these sectors on a utilities basis the costs of using the NBN for such purposes will be too high. This would result in a continuation of the private networks that are currently used within these sectors and the opportunity for an important revenue stream for NBN would be lost.
So we have to make sure that the NBN plans realise the opportunity for the delivery of trans-sector services in an effective and efficient (affordable) way.
The scant international evidence we have indicates that incumbents are the entities most likely to be effective at value-adding a basic access offering to an NBN such that high quality and functional business and government services are delivered.
The competition advantages that will flow from an NBN constructed to as basic a formula as possible are fine for commercial purposes. However, these commercial advantages stand in stark contrast to the difficulty that will arise due to the fact that very few trans-sectoral services can afford to run over an NBN that would potentially force these sectors to use services that can only be provided by one national wholesale player. We certainly need to ask the question: what gets priority here – competition policy subtleties or the national interest? I would like to stress that the issue here is the creation of an infrastructure such that competition may be maximised at the services level.
This concern seems to be addressed in the proposed NBN Co legislation, which will give the government the possibility of allowing sectors to buy infrastructure capacity directly from NBN Co. This doesn’t mean that NBN Co will, for example, become the healthcare retail operator. Others in the ICT industry will still have to build the systems and services on top of that network. NBN Co will not be involved in any of that and if necessary that may need to be enshrined in the legislation as well.
This does not mean that these sectors will have to use the ‘retail clause’. The clause in itself could be enough for the wholesale operators to ensure that they provide their services to these sectors at an affordable price.
Paul Budde
See also:
The retail clause in the proposed NBN Co legislation is exactly what is needed to guarantee that the NBN can be used to deliver the national social and economic benefits that BuddeComm (along with others) envisaged in the very early days, when they were involved in the strategic plans behind what is now the NBN.
Throughout the debate around the development of the NBN it is crucial to keep the focus on why we are building this infrastructure in the first place, and why we are spending taxpayer dollars on it.
From the outset BuddeComm clearly identified that a trans-sector approach was required. The NBN infrastructure should be used for the delivery of a range of services such as healthcare, education, public safety applications and energy and environmental apps such as smart grids. If the NBN were to be built for commercial services, like high-speed Internet, delivery would cost an exorbitant $200 plus per month per user. So, from an economic point of view also, it is essential that we ensure the infrastructure is used trans-sectorally.
The OECD had identified the delivery of health, energy and transport services over high-speed networks as key benefits to support the accelerated deployment of high-speed broadband networks by governments. This concept is now receiving such widespread support that I am currently working with the UN to move this trans-sector concept up into international telecoms policies.
The Australian government has been an international leader here; from the beginning it clearly stated that the NBN should be used for non-commercial applications. At the same time we also know that if the NBN is not made available to these sectors on a utilities basis the costs of using the NBN for such purposes will be too high. This would result in a continuation of the private networks that are currently used within these sectors and the opportunity for an important revenue stream for NBN would be lost.
So we have to make sure that the NBN plans realise the opportunity for the delivery of trans-sector services in an effective and efficient (affordable) way.
The scant international evidence we have indicates that incumbents are the entities most likely to be effective at value-adding a basic access offering to an NBN such that high quality and functional business and government services are delivered.
The competition advantages that will flow from an NBN constructed to as basic a formula as possible are fine for commercial purposes. However, these commercial advantages stand in stark contrast to the difficulty that will arise due to the fact that very few trans-sectoral services can afford to run over an NBN that would potentially force these sectors to use services that can only be provided by one national wholesale player. We certainly need to ask the question: what gets priority here – competition policy subtleties or the national interest? I would like to stress that the issue here is the creation of an infrastructure such that competition may be maximised at the services level.
This concern seems to be addressed in the proposed NBN Co legislation, which will give the government the possibility of allowing sectors to buy infrastructure capacity directly from NBN Co. This doesn’t mean that NBN Co will, for example, become the healthcare retail operator. Others in the ICT industry will still have to build the systems and services on top of that network. NBN Co will not be involved in any of that and if necessary that may need to be enshrined in the legislation as well.
This does not mean that these sectors will have to use the ‘retail clause’. The clause in itself could be enough for the wholesale operators to ensure that they provide their services to these sectors at an affordable price.
Chile is the most mature telecom market in Latin America and the region’s pioneer when it comes to new technologies. In fact, Chile was the first country in Latin America to see services such as mobile WiMAX, IPTV, wireless TVoIP, triple play, EDGE, and mobile voice-to-text, among others. It was the second country in the region, after Puerto Rico, to have 3G mobile services. In December 2009, Chile became the first country in Latin America and the fifth in the world (after Sweden, Norway, Japan, and the USA) to test LTE technology.
Chile is viewed as a role model by the international business community for its competitive free market approach. In the Global Competitiveness Report 2009-2010, Chile was ranked thirtieth in the world and first in Latin America, scoring well thanks to a highly developed infrastructure, transparent institutions, and well-functioning goods and financial markets, but doing poorly in terms of its education system.
The country is the regional leader in terms of Internet and broadband penetration. It used to boast the region’s highest penetration rates for mobile telephony, but has been overtaken by several other countries. In terms of fixed-line teledensity, it lags behind six other Latin American nations.
Chile’s success in the broadband market can be attributed to the country’s relatively high GDP, its receptivity towards new technologies, and a setup that has succeeded in creating some competition between broadband providers. Nevertheless, Chile’s broadband map shows considerable disparities between regions, ranging from 13.5% broadband penetration per capita in Region II, an important industrial hub, to 4.5% in Region VII, a predominantly rural area.
As elsewhere in the region, cell phones are far more popular than fixed lines in Chile. But mobile growth had already slowed before the onset of the global financial crunch, indicating that the country may be facing early mobile market saturation. In fact, while Chile’s GDP per capita is high compared with the rest of the region, the steep income disparity leaves a sizeable section of the population unable to afford a mobile handset. However, more and more people own two SIM cards: one for their cell phone, and one for mobile broadband.
Market highlights:
For more information see: Chile – Telecoms, Mobile, Broadband and Forecasts
A Law on Information and Communications Technology (ICT) was ratified in July 2009, representing the culmination of many years work on the part of the Ministry of Communications and the telecom industry. This was the first substantive reform since the Telecommunications Act of 1979.
The ICT Law aims to guarantee a proper regulatory framework for telecom development in Colombia. It promotes universal access, ensures free competition and the efficient use of infrastructure and spectrum, and above all, it strengthens consumer protection.
Under the ICT Law, any Colombian with a fixed-line, mobile, or Internet service must be clearly informed of his/her rights and responsibilities. The Superintendency of Trade and Industry is the authority in charge of addressing all complaints relating to telecommunications.
With the new law, the Ministry of Communications was renamed Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (or Ministry of ICT). The regulatory authority was strengthened and its name was changed from Telecommunications Regulatory Commission to Communications Regulatory Commission.
The ICT Law is based on the following principles:
See also: Colombia – Telecom Market Trends, Key Statistics & Regulatory Overview
South Africa’s telecom sector boasts the continent’s most advanced networks in terms of technology deployed and services provided. Following years of delays with its licensing, the second national operator (SNO) Neotel has finally launched services in competition with Telkom SA and is gaining traction in the market. This, in combination with other sweeping liberalisation measures – also delayed by years – is beginning to change the country’s telecoms landscape fundamentally and bringing prices down.
Under the new regulatory regime, hundreds of alternative service providers are now pushing into the market with converged services. There has been consolidation in the sector which is expected to continue. Key regulatory events shaping the market in 2010/11 will be the auctioning of WiMAX spectrum and the unbundling of the local loop (ULL, or LLU).
The country has a vibrant mobile market that has seen rapid uptake since competition was introduced 15 years ago. With market penetration above 100% and number portability available, the network operators – Vodacom, MTN, Cell C and Telkom SA – are increasingly forced to find innovative ways of distinguishing themselves from the competition in order to gain and retain customers. While emerging as the country’s leading broadband providers, the major mobile operators are also aggressively entering the fixed-line market in a rapidly converging environment.
In addition, the government has created Broadband InfraCo, a national infrastructure company to provide cheap backbone network capacity to service providers. Despite the significantly increased competition between different service providers, many municipalities in South Africa, including the country’s largest cities, are implementing their own fibre and wireless broadband networks.
The arrival of Seacom as the second international submarine fibre optic cable in South Africa in 2009 has brought down the cost of international bandwidth dramatically. Previously, Telkom had been monopolising access to the only major cable serving the country, SAT-3/WASC/SAFE. Several other cables are scheduled to go live in 2010 and 2011.
South Africa’s Internet and Broadband market is finally taking off after years of stagnation due to the expensive operating environment created by Telkom SA’s dominance in the fixed-line and international bandwidth market. Wireless broadband, including WiMAX and 3G/HSDPA mobile data services now rival available ADSL offerings in terms of both speed and price, and consequently subscriber numbers. With its fixed-line network reaching less than 10% of the population, the incumbent has reacted by launching its own 3G network and the country’s first commercial WiMAX service, but various competitors are hard on its heels rolling out the same technology, including second national operator Neotel.
South Africa is also taking a regional lead role in the convergence of telecommunication and information technologies with the media and entertainment sector, promising reductions in telecommunication costs and better availability of information and services. Billions of dollars are being invested into IP-based NGN that are capable of delivering converged services more efficiently.
Telecom carriers and ISPs are moving into delivering audio and video content over their networks, while in turn the traditional electronic media carriers are discovering the potential of their infrastructure for telecommunications service delivery. Digital media and social media have reached a level of development to foster an associated advertising and marketing industry.
Market highlights of the new BuddeComm report:
For more info see: South Africa – Telecoms, Mobile and Broadband
Japan’s telecommunications sector is one of the most active markets in the world. Coming into 2010, the country was undergoing strong competition among the mobile operators in the 3G segment of the market which now comprises 95% of the total mobile market. Heavy discounts and aggressive promotions, as well as the introduction of new methods of handset repayments in instalments, are responsible for the growth occurring across Japan’s already mature mobile sector. This, combined with operators shutting down their 2G networks in the next few years and the acquisition of mobile content, is propelling the robust growth being experienced in the 3G market. ARPU has continued to decline but this is expected to turn around by 2011 to show growth as more non-voice data makes it way to the market.
Japan is one of the world’s leading mobile telephone markets, not only in terms of size but also in terms of innovation and its ability to be early with the introduction of advanced technologies. The market is characterised by intense competition and as user needs become varied, it becomes more difficult for any one carrier to hold on to a majority of market share. Japan has concrete plans to start implementing commercial operations of Long-term Evolution starting in 2010 by NTT and other operators following suit up to 2012.
The affordability of mobile services, and customers looking to cut down outgoings, even though Japan has emerged out of a recession, has damaged the fixed-line market. The number of available lines has continued to decline. It is not only the affordability of mobile services that has damaged the fixed-line market, so too have VoIP services.
Entering 2010, Japan had over 30 million broadband lines in place, making it the third largest broadband country in the world after the US and China. Much of the success of broadband in Japan is owed to the stunning growth surge that occurred back in 2003 on the back of DSL broadband technology. Today Fibre-to-the-Home comprises around 50% of the total broadband market. Japan has also been an early adopter of triple play models which provide TV, broadband Internet and voice telephony as packaged services from a single provider. E-services are continuing to gain ground as a driver of convergence in the Japanese telecommunications market.
The telecommunications regulatory authorities in Japan have been very active in shaping the industry in this country. As a result of their efforts, Japan has assumed a dynamic leadership role in many aspects of global and regional telecommunications. In addition the country has made big strides in developing digital and mobile broadcasting.
Although Japan emerged from a recession during 2009, it is anticipated that it faces a long and bumpy recovery in 2010. The new DPJ government is unlikely to enact major reforms and it is expected that the new government will struggle to get to grips with the country’s structural problems.
Key highlights:
For more information see: Japan – Telecoms, Mobile and Broadband
Chunghwa Telecom’s Optical Era Project involves an investment of around NT$60 billion (US$1.8 billion) to construct an island-wide fibre-optic network over five years. By 2010 it aims to provide direct fibre access to 2.4 million residential and business subscribers. The expansion will equip Chunghwa Telecom with higher network capacity and offer FttB subscribers data transfer at download speeds of 10Mb/s, 50Mb/s and 100Mb/s for services including IPTV and virtual private networks (VPNs). To date, the greatest development has been in the FttB and FttN segments, suggesting that more emphasis has been placed on connecting public buildings and offices. However, looking ahead, Chunghwa Telecom expects to see significant FttH growth, indicating that it plans to increase the number of residential homes that are connected by fibre.
The company is to spend to NT$30 billion (US$930m) per year on expanding its FttX network in its home market over the next two to three years in an effort to replace its existing ADSL network. Chunghwa Telecom anticipates that the number of FttX connections will surpass that of ADSL by end 2011. Going into 2010 FttX subscribers had already passed the 1.5 million mark while ADSL subscribers were around 2.5 million. The company expects its FttX network coverage to reach 83% by the end of 2013.
Chunghwa Telecom was unsuccessful in its bid to get a WiMAX regional licence in 2007. Then in 2009 the tender date for nationwide licenses was postponed due to the regional operators delaying commercialisation of their networks for a variety of reasons. It is not clear whether Chunghwa Telecom will make a bid for a nationwide WiMAX licence. Certainly, with increasing success in the fibre rollout and taking a market lead in this area, the company is well placed to make a well reasoned decision on its future in the broadband access market, especially considering its comments on commitment to the introduction of LTE by 2011.
See: Taiwan – Broadband Market – Overview & Statistics
See: Taiwan – Mobile Market – Overview & Statistics
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