The Swedish Telecommunications Market 2008 - PTS-ER-2009:21
09/06/2009
The retail market for electronic communications reduced during 2008 by 1 per cent, measured in revenues for mobile call and data services, fixed telephony, Internet services and data communications, and total revenues for the year amounted to SEK 49.5bn. Revenues for mobile call and data services increased by 4 per cent to 20.5bn, Internet services increased by 3 per cent to 8.6bn, data communications services reduced by 1 per cent to 4.0bn and fixed call services reduced by 9 per cent to 16.4bn. It is primarily revenues from undertakings that are decreasing. An average household generated 566 kronor per month in revenues for market stakeholders during 2008, which was 4 kronor more than during 2007.
The proportion of voice traffic minutes in mobile networks increased to 41.4 per cent of the total number of voice traffic minutes in 2008. The corresponding proportion in 2007 was 34.9 per cent. Traffic for mobile data services amounted to 13 720 Tbytes, which corresponds to an increase of 526 per cent compared with 2007.
On 31 December 2008 there were 5 323 000 fixed telephone subscriptions in Sweden, which is 3 per cent less than at the corresponding time in 2007. TeliaSonera’s PSTN subscriptions continued to decline and, for the first time, the alternative operators’ ‘WLR’ (Wholesale Line Rental) subscriptions via PSTN also declined. However, the number of subscriptions for IP-based telephony increased by 18 per cent to 735 000 subscriptions. The number of pre-selection customers decreased by 34 per cent to 337 000.
During 2008, the number of contract subscriptions and active pre-paid cards for mobile call and data services increased by 9 per cent to 10 988 000. The proportion of contract subscriptions increased at the expense of the proportion of pre-paid cards, which decreased. The number of subscriptions for mobile packet data (mobile broadband) only was 877 000 at the end of 2008, corresponding to an increase of 133 per cent compared with one year earlier.
The number of active customers with broadband increased by 20 per cent to 3 782 000 during 2008, and subscriptions for mobile packet data alone represented 80 per cent of the total increase. The number of subscriptions via fibre or fibre LAN increased by 16 per cent to 590 000.
The proportion of households having a subscription with a fixed broadband connection also increased during the year, from 58 to 60 per cent. At the same time, the proportion of the population having a subscription with a mobile broadband connection to the Internet increased, from 2 to 6 per cent.
The total number of television subscriptions increased by 7 per cent to 4 945 000 during 2008, an increase that primarily relates to subscriptions for digital television via cable television networks.
Telematics, that is machine-to-machine communications (M2M), via mobile networks is a an area of growth within the area of electronic communications that has a number of areas of application, such as automatic reading of electricity supply meters, positioning and monitoring. Growth in the telematics area is primarily powered by the possibility of reducing production and operating costs. Telematic solutions may for instance mean that various kinds of control functions and services will only need to be performed when necessary, rather than on an ongoing basis. The sales of telematic services in Sweden are still low compared with other sub-areas in the market, but the potential for future growth is good – not least as telematic services do not normally impose particularly great demands on capacity compared with, for instance, mobile broadband. In this way the operators can increase their revenues by using existing networks for new applications of telematic solutions.
The substantial increase in the number of subscriptions for mobile broadband and the volumes of mobile packet data transmitted per user can be linked to the trend towards increasing numbers of functions being offered as Internet-based services – functions that previously were dependent upon locally installed platforms or applications. For private individuals, this may involve an opportunity to store pictures, music, film clips, documents and other material on the Internet with the aim of being able to access these files from any Internet connection terminal whatsoever. However, increased capacity requirements will probably demand investments in mobile networks that in their turn will be financed by revenues from end-customers. However, today the revenues from mobile broadband are low in relation to the amount of traffic generated by the service, which means that new business models will probably be introduced to enable the operators to meet forthcoming investment requirements. It is conceivable that these business models will partly comprise new types of price plans where certain traffic is in one or more ways given priority over other traffic. This may in its turn raise issues concerning network neutrality and have consequences for the population in areas that can only receive broadband via mobile networks.
In January 2008, the supervisory authorities in the area of telecommunications of the respective EU States confirmed that all EU States have implemented the Commission Regulation governing prices for international roaming. One year after the introduction of these regulations, the average price for outgoing calls generated by Swedish travellers within the EU reduced by a third, and the price for text messaging (SMS) by just less than one-fourth. It is expected that there will be regulations in the future regarding, among other things, SMS and mobile data traffic.
For more information see http://svensktelemarknad.se/