The Swedish Telecommunication Market 2010 - PTS-ER-2011:15
19/05/2011
Revenues in the retail market for electronic communications increased by 3.8 per cent in 2010 and amounted in aggregate to SEK 53 bn. The total revenues lay at around SEK 50bn during most years in the 2000s, but in 2010 they increased more than previous years and were the highest ever.
A large part of the increase can be traced to increased revenues from mobile data services. At the end of 2010 there were almost as many subscriptions for broadband via the mobile networks as via the fixed networks. There were in total 2 990 000 subscriptions for fixed broadband and 2 921 000 subscriptions for mobile broadband on 31 December 2010. Of the mobile broadband, 1.7 million comprised subscriptions for mobile broadband as a stand-alone service and a further 1.2 million were broadband via an add-on service to the ordinary mobile subscription. It is due to the great increase in the number of smartphones that there are now almost as many mobile broadband subscriptions as fixed subscriptions.
It is also clear as regards call traffic that the mobile networks are becoming increasingly prominent. The number of outgoing traffic minutes from the mobile networks amounted during 2010, on an annual basis, to more than the number of outgoing traffic minutes from the fixed networks. Fifty-three per cent of the outgoing call traffic during 2010 came from the mobile networks. However, the total number of outgoing voice traffic minutes lies at the same level, about 42 billion minutes, as during previous years.
The number of broadband subscriptions with higher transmission capacity is constantly increasing. At the end of 2010 there were over 2.1 million subscriptions for a rate of 10 Mbits per second or more in transmission capacity downstream. The number of subscriptions with a transmission capacity of at least 100 Mbits per second downstream amounted on 31 December 2010 to 163 000, of which 159 000 were private subscriptions. This corresponds to 8 per cent of the households in Sweden that have the possibility of connecting to transmission capacity of at least 100 Mbits per second.
The number of PSTN and ISDN subscriptions continues to reduce, while the number of subscriptions for IP-based telephony continues to increase and now comprises almost one-fourth (24 per cent) of all subscriptions for fixed telephony.
A brief description is provided in this report of the development in the retail market for electronic communications in Sweden during 2010. Comparisons are mainly made with corresponding periods in previous years. Statistics are available in Tables on PTS’s statistics portal (www.statistik.pts.se), where the data of individual operators is also available.