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data shows that Japan and USA are leading the
other countries in subscriber base.
Based on ITU reported data for global mobile
BB subscribers, the top 10 countries for 2008 are
listed in Table 5 below together with their trend
in growth of subscribers over the last 3 years.
The growth rate displayed in the Table 5 indi-
cates that in year 2007, most countries experienced
significant growth in their number of mobile
subscribers i.e., the year over year changes in
growth rates for 2007 over 2006 are in general
very high. The same year-over-year growth rates
in 2008 are lot less in comparison to previous
year. One of the reasons for these declines in the
estimated growth rates is due to increased base
of mobile broadband subscribers in 2007 for many
countries in comparison to that in 2006.
Even though USA has the second largest
number of mobile BB subscribers in the world,
this ranking changes when we study the penetra-
tion rate rather than absolute number of mobile
BB subscribers in various countries around the
world
18
. The 3-years trend in mobile broadband
penetration rate is displayed in Table 6 below for
the period 2006-2008.
Numbers in the above table show that Japan
is leading the world by penetration rate of mobile
subscriptions followed by Korea in second posi-
tion. It is important to mention that the observed
trends of mobile BB subscription base and pen-
etration rates for various countries in Table 5 and
6 are tied to the definition of mobile BB subscrip-
tion used by ITU in its data collection process.
Member countries are aware of difficulties in
measuring mobile BB subscriber/subscription and
country representatives are providing input to ITU
for improving the definition and measurement
methodology for obtaining better and unbiased
statistics of number of subscribers/subscriptions
across countries
19
.
The mobile subscription behavior observed
in above two tables clearly reflects the recent
experience of rapid growth in demand for mobile
broadband access in many countries around the
world. This is partly a result of the continuous ad-
vancement in wireless communication technology,
enabling increase in the speed of data transmission
together with improved quality and stability of
network and thus satisfying the growing demand
for mobile BB connections.
Table 5. 3 Years Trend in number of Mobile Broadband Subscribers for Top 10 Countries 2006-2008
% Growth
2007/2006
% Growth
2008/2007
Country Name
2006
2007
2008
Japan
50,594,200
72,690,896
92,613,480
43.61%
27.41%
USA
11,015,968
53,065,192
81,899,720
381.71%
54.34%
Korea
15,512,027
23,426,932
34,061,960
51.02%
45.40%
Italy
17,091,000
24,548,000
30,329,836
43.63%
23.55%
U.K.
7,820,072
12,514,000
20,732,364
60.02%
65.67%
Spain
3,718,116
10,031,050
17,275,184
169.79%
72.22%
France
4,169,474
8,448,387
14,626,233
102.62%
73.12%
Germany
4,500,000
8,700,000
11,500,000
93.33%
32.18%
Australia
2,999,000
6,809,000
11,316,013
127.04%
66.19%
Taiwan, China
3,267,987
6,529,566
8,886,875
99.80%
36.10%
Source: ITU World Telecommunications Indicators Database, June, 2009
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