India Will Drive Nearly Half of Asia-Pacific Mobile Subscriber Growth, Driving Internet Access

India is on track to surpass half a billion mobile subscribers by the end of the year, according to a new GSMA Intelligence study. By 2020, India will account for almost half of all the subscriber growth expected in the Asia Pacific region.

The Mobile Economy: India 2015 notes that 13 percent of the world’s mobile subscribers reside in India. At the  end of 2014, India’s mobile subscriber penetration rate was about 36 percent of the population, compared to a 50 percent global average.

But that is going to change, fast.

The subscriber penetration rate in India is forecast to reach 54 per cent by 2020 as many millions more are connected by mobile.

India had 453 million unique mobile subscribers at the end of 2014, but is forecast to surpass 500 million by the end of 2015 and add a further 250 million subscribers by 2020 to reach 734 million.  

That matters for reasons beyond the ability to communicate using voice and text. Fixed broadband penetration in India is about 2.5 percent, and will not increase much more than that, for business model reasons.

In contrast, 60 percent to 90 percent of the population have access to at least a 2G mobile service.

That means the mobile network will become the dominant means of getting access to the Internet. The number of individuals accessing the internet over mobile devices had expanded from less than 100 million subscribers in 2010 to nearly 300 million at the end of 2014.

Although India only launched 3G services in 2009 and 4G deployments are at an early stage, the move to mobile broadband networks is set to gather pace over the coming years.

Mobile broadband networks (3G/4G) accounted for only 11 percent of Indian mobile connections 1 in 2014, but are expected to make up 42 percent of the total by 2020.

One factor driving the migration to mobile broadband networks is the increasing adoption of smartphones, made possible by low-cost devices.

More than half a billion new smartphones connections are expected in India between 2015 and 2020, bringing the total to 690 million, up from 149 million in 2014.

The penetration of mobile Internet has reached 24 percent of the population by mid-2015.

This figure will almost double again in the next five years to reach 44 percent of the population by 2020, with around 600 million mobile internet subscribers.

Millennials Will Buy Video, Audio Entertainment. News? Not So Much

Some 93 percent of Millennials buy some form of content, a study by the American Press Institute finds. The bad news for “press” entities is that most of that spending is for video or audio entertainment products, not “news.”

The two most popular types of paid subscriptions or content regularly used by Millennials are those that access online movies and TV (77 percent) and cable television (69 percent).

A majority of Millennials also use paid content for music (54 percent) and video games (51 percent).

The most popular paid news subscriptions or content regularly used by Millennials are print magazines (30 percent) and print newspapers (29 percent).

Fewer than 20 percent of Millennials regularly use paid access to a digital news app (19 percent), a digital newspaper (15 percent), a digital magazine (15 percent), or an email newsletter (15 percent).

source: Business Insider

Why Spectrum Sharing Matters

A new white paper on What is Spectrum Sharing and Why Does it Matter? is posted on the Spectrum Futures blog. 

Spectrum sharing matters because communications spectrum is a scarce asset, and demand is growing very fast, both because billions of new Internet access users will come online, and because new Internet apps and devices consume vastly more bandwidth.

Spectrum sharing martters, in large markets, because there is, for example, almost no uncommitted communications spectrum available in the sub-2-GHz range.

Though there is an expectation that much spectrum in millimeter bands (3 GHz to 300 GHz) can be allocated for communications purposes, most of that spectrum will be severely “short range,” and hence best suited for indoor or small cell applications.

Global mobile data traffic grew 69 percent in 2014, and each succeeding mobile generation seems to grow consumption by an order of magnitude, according to Cisco estimates. Long Term Evolution (4G) devices consume an order of magnitude more data than a non-LTE device, for example.

Any smartphone tends to lead to consumption of 37 times the data of a feature phone, according to Cisco. And smartphones are becoming the standard global device. Where today 28 percent of customers use smartphones, that will grow to perhaps 52 percentby 2018.

Use of Internet access plans might reach 84 percent by 2020, according to Ericsson.

In other words, smartphones will be as common as toothbrushes.

To be sure, spectrum sharing also introduces a new element of business model uncertainty, because spectrum sharing can replace a large measure of scarcity with a large measure of abundance.

Blue Origin (Jeff Bezos Company) Makes First-Ever Landing of a Reusable Rocket Booster

Blue Origin, a company owned by Jeff Bezos, has successfully, for the very first time, managed to land a rocket booster.

Once repeatable, that reuse of boosters could dramatically slice the cost of launching payloads. Some think a reduction to about 20 percent of today's launch cost is possible.

 

Mobile Money is Among Key Telco Innovation Successes

Some telco efforts to enter new markets succeed, while others fail.

Mobile money businesses appear to be a clear example of the former, while over the top voice and messaging services appear to be an example of the latter.

At least so far, there is optimism about Internet of Things initiatives. It is unclear whether cloud computing might become an example of the latter, as well.

Mobile success in banking-related services might come as a bit of a surprise, even if “financial inclusion” is a major problem.

As of 2014, 40 percent of the global adult population did not have any kind of formal financial account, bank based or otherwise, and as such were considered financially excluded, according to GSMA.

Emerging markets led the growth of global non-cash transactions between 2009 and 2013. The volume of non-cash transactions grew 13 percent compared to mature markets at six percent, driven by emerging markets in Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa, which saw growth rates of 20 percent per year.

As of June 2015 there were 255 live mobile money services around the world, with a further 102 services planned, according to GSMA.

More than half of the live services are in Sub-Saharan Africa, where mobile money has become a popular service not only for fund transfers but also for other transactions such as airtime top-ups and bill payments.

There are 300 million mobile money accounts globally and 2.3 million agent outlets extending mobile money services to customers who do not have access to a bank branch network, GSMA notes.

There also are more than 100 million active mobile money accounts in service. Some 21 services have more than one million active accounts, and in 16 countries the number of mobile money accounts is greater than the number of bank accounts.

source: GSMA

source: GSMA

High Consumer and Supplier Taxes Affect Mobile Adoption

Direct taxes on consumers for using mobile services. Taxes and fees likewise represent a huge percentage of operating costs for many mobile service providers.

In Pakistan, taxes represent 32 percent of the total cost of consumer mobile ownership and 33 percent of the cost to consumers of using mobile services.

In India, consumer taxes represent 23 percent of the total consumer cost of mobile ownership and 23 percent of the cost of using mobile services, according to the GSMA.

In India, “total outflow to the government in the form of all fees (spectrum, license, upfront, deferred) is an astounding between 25 percent to 35 percent every year,” says Parag Kar, Qualcomm VP, government affairs, India and South Asia, quantifying the impact of operator-specific fees. “This will impact operator’s ability to invest in networks and electronics.”

source: GSMA

In Emerging Markets, Mobile IS Internet Access, Says GSMA

With low fixed network Internet access availability in most emerging markets, mobile is increasingly becoming the key method for Internet access, the GSMA reports.

Coverage levels of 3G and 4G networks in emerging markets are expected to increase to 84 percent and 65 percent of the population respectively by 2020.

Given the increased availability of high-speed internet and the growing supply of sub-$50 smartphones, smartphone adoption will increase significantly to 2020, to account for 60 percent of total connections or more than 4.5 billion connections.By 2020, mobile Internet access will reach 100 percent in East Asia, 106 percent in South America and 131 percent in Central and Eastern Europe.

By 2020, mobile Internet access will have climbed from the 2014 level of 24 percent in the Middle East and North Africa to 71 percent. In Sub-Saharan Africa mobile Internet access will grow from 13 percent to 53 percent.

In South Asia, mobile Internet access will rise from seven percent to 41 percent, growth of nearly 600 percent.

source: GSMA

The growth of mobile Internet access will be propelled, in substantial part, by huge increases in use of smartphones.

source: GSMA