Developing Telecoms | Broadband to drive mobile revenue growth in MENA

9 February 2012

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Broadband to drive mobile revenue growth in MENA

Wednesday, 30 June 2010 10:40 | James Barton

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Revenue from mobile broadband in the MENA region is likely to quadruple by 2014, according to a new report from Onda Analytics. Although handset-based revenue is expected to be slow, mobile broadband will have a major impact on operators’ financials with over 20 million subscribers in the region forecast by 2014.

By 2014, over 60% of mobile broadband revenue will be generated by just four countries: Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Though these countries represent only 40% of the region’s population, according to report author, Tom Harden, “poor competition from fixed services, a desire by some regional operators to showcase advanced services and strategies by late entrants to focus on data services are among the reasons mobile broadband will succeed in certain countries”.

Onda Analytics’ latest report assesses the mobile telecoms markets across the region, providing full forecasts for mobile subscribers and revenue in the region. Operators have seen high mobile subscriber growth in recent years, increasing at an average of 30% per annum since 2006 to 304 million subscribers by 2009.

The report considers future investment plans by operators, with a series of operator and regulator interviews revealing plans for new networks based on Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology providing high-speed mobile broadband connections. It also considers several opportunities for investment, pinpointing a number of prospects in countries such as Algeria, Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon. It also includes separate forecasts for key KPIs for 18 countries in the region: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

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