Evolution in Broadband Technology and Future of Wireless Broadband - Adoption, Usage, and Global Impact of Broadband Technologies - page 228

Table 6. 3Year Trend in Mobile Broadband Penetration Rate** for Top 10 Countries 2006-2008

Penetration rate,
2006

Penetration rate,
2007

Penetration
Rate, 2008

% Growth
2007/2006

% Growth
2008/2007

Country Name

Japan 39.46 56.80 72.39 43.94% 27.45%

Korea (Rep.) 32.33 48.58 70.39 50.26% 44.90%

Singapore 24.69 43.31 67.13 75.42% 55.00%

Luxembourg 28.77 43.18 66.72 50.09% 54.52%

Australia 14.72 32.83 54.01 123.03% 64.51%

Italy 29.39 41.69 51.45 41.85% 23.41%

Macao, China NA 9.55* 47.45 NA 396.86%*

New Zealand 13.12 28.01 45.40 113.49% 62.08%

Austria 20.37? 29.48 41.90 44.72% 42.13%

Portugal 20.51 29.25 40.51 42.61% 38.50%

Source: ITU World Telecommunications Indicators Database, June, 2009
Note: * Could be some outlier in data, ** Penetration rate is defined by number of subscribers per 100 inhabitants

FUTURE ROLE OF FIXED
AND MOBILE BROADBAND
TECHNOLOGY

Trend in Fixed vs. Mobile
Broadband Diffusion

The trend for fixed and mobile BB subscribers
over the last 8 years is summarized in Table 7.
The numbers in the Table 7 clearly illustrate
that the growth rates for mobile BB subscribers
are relatively higher than that for fixed BB sub-
scribers 20 in the recent years. The above table also
shows that at the aggregate level, in 2008, the
number of fixed and mobile BB subscribers is
very close indicating the possibility of mobile BB
subscriptions to exceed that of fixed BB connec-
tions in many parts of the world. However the
time of crossover could be different for different
countries depending on country specific demand
and supply side stimulus. Therefore, country
level study of the BB adoption behavior will be
more interesting. However, due to limitation in
time series data, we select 5 countries for analy-
sis. These 5 countries are Japan, USA, Korea,
Italy and UK. Behavior of the fixed and mobile
broadband subscribers for these countries for the
period of 2006-2008 is displayed in Table 8 below.
From Table 8, it is clear that by 2006, the
number of mobile BB subscribers had exceeded
the number of fixed BB subscribers in Japan,

Trend in Traditional Landline vs.
Mobile Cellular Subscriptions

The scenario described in previous section indi-
cates the possibility that, the current experience
of subscription dynamics observed in the voice
telephony space between landline and wireless
around the world will be replicated in the behavior
of fixed versus wireless BB subscriptions. The
trend in landline versus mobile cellular subscrip-
tions at the global level for the time period 1980
- 2007 is shown in Figure 7.
The above figure indicates that at the aggregate
level, the total number of subscribers for mobile
phone in the world has exceeded the number of
landline (fixed telephone line) subscriptions in
year 2002. However, in reality, the cross over time
point is different for different countries depending
on their rates of deployment of mobile networks,
and other demand and supply side factors (see
Appendix-C for observed behavior of landline
versus mobile cellular subscriptions for 8 se-
lected countries).