The Swedish Telecommunication Market First Half Year 2011 - PTS-ER-2011:21

07/11/2011

Surfing via mobile telephones has increased greatly during the past year. On 30 June 2011 there were almost 2.3 million subscriptions where at least 1 Gigabyte of data traffic was included or was purchased as an add-on to the ordinary mobile subscription; there were just less than 800 000 such subscriptions one year earlier. Subscriptions for mobile broadband as a stand-alone service also increased and were 1.9 million at the end of June 2011. Mobile subscriptions without broadband also increased, and there were in total 13.1 million subscriptions for mobile call and data services at the end of June 2011, representing an increase of seven per cent in one year.

The number of broadband subscriptions via fibre continued to increase and was 843 000 at the end of June 2011. A break in trend occurred in the spring, when the number of subscriptions for broadband via cable television decreased for the first time. Subscriptions for broadband via xDSL have decreased since 2008, and they were 1 547 000 at the end of June 2011. This means that subscriptions for fixed broadband have overall increased slightly and amounted in total to almost 3 million at the end of June 2011. Of all subscriptions for Internet services, mobile broadband now comprises 56 per cent.

The number of PSTN and ISDN subscriptions continued to reduce, and the number of subscriptions for IP-based telephony continued to increase; they comprise almost one-fourth (27 per cent) of all subscriptions for fixed telephony.

At the end of June 2011 the number of subscriptions for digital television services was 2.7 million, representing an increase of three per cent in one year. IPTV via fibre represented a large part of this increase and comprised 484 000 subscriptions at the end of June 2011.

During the first half-year of 2011, 42 300 Terabytes of data were sent and received in mobile networks, which is almost a two-fold increase compared with one year earlier. The number of SMS messages and MMS messages also continued to increase during the first half-year of 2011 compared with the same period in 2010.

Fifty-five per cent of the outgoing call traffic during the first half-year of 2011 came from the mobile networks. The total number of outgoing voice traffic minutes decreased compared with previous years.

A brief description is provided in this report of the development in the retail market for electronic communications in Sweden during the first half-year of 2011. Comparisons are mainly made with corresponding periods in previous years. Statistics are available in Tables on PTS’s statistics portal (statistik.pts.se), where the data of individual operators is also available.