The Swedish Telecommunications Market 2009 - PTS-ER-2010:13

03/06/2010

The retail market for electronic communications increased during 2009 by 2 per cent, measured as revenues for mobile call and data services, fixed telephony, Internet services and data communications, and total revenues for the year amounted to SEK 50.5 bn. The average household generated 563 kronor per month in revenues for market stakeholders during 2009, which was 1 kronor less than during 2008.

The ongoing trend, with growth of mobile services and stagnation or reduction of fixed services, became stronger during the year.

Revenues for mobile call and data services increased by 9 per cent to SEK 22.2bn. During 2009 the number of subscriptions for mobile call and data services increased by 7 per cent, from 10.9 million on 31 December 2008 to 11.6 million on 31 December 2009. Subscriptions for mobile broadband represent the largest share of this increase – the number of such subscriptions increased from 877 000 on 31 December 2008 to 1 310 000 on 31 December 2009. This represents an increase of 50 per cent, but it also indicates that the increase has tailed off compared with previous periods. It is worth noting that during 2009 more text messages (SMS) were sent than calls was made from fixed and mobile phones.. During 2009, 16.3 billion SMS were sent from mobile telephones, corresponding to an annual increase of about 65 per cent. The average customer sent 133 SMS per month. Traffic for mobile data services amounted to 27 800 Terabytes, corresponding to an increase of 103 per cent compared with 2008.

Revenues for fixed call services reduced by 6 per cent to SEK 15.4m. On 31 December 2009 there were 5 151 000 fixed telephone subscriptions in Sweden, which is 4 per cent less than at the corresponding time one year earlier. Traditional fixed telephony (PSTN and ISDN) is reducing, while fixed IP-based telephony continues to increase.

The number of Internet subscriptions amounted at the end of 2009 to 4 596 000. Of these, 4 255 000 were broadband subscriptions, which corresponds to an increase of 13 per cent compared with the end of 2008 when they were 3 780 000. The number of subscriptions for fixed broadband was 2 945 000 on 31 December 2009, which is in line with the figure one year previously. This means that growth of fixed broadband has stagnated. The number of subscriptions via xDSL continues to reduce within the category ‘fixed broadband’, while the number of subscriptions via cable television networks and fibre LAN is increasing.

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