Subscriber growth and LTE painting a pretty picture for UAE market

Details: James Barton; Category: Trends & Forecasts; 20 January 2012; 9753 views

The highly-developed UAE telecom sector was rocked this year by the arrival of LTE, introduced by number one operator Etisalat – but competition is already snapping at its heels...

The highly-developed UAE telecom sector was rocked this year by the arrival of LTE, introduced by number one operator Etisalat – but competition is already snapping at its heels, according to BMI.

In September 2011, fixed-line incumbent and mobile market leader Etisalat launched its LTE network for high-speed broadband services. The LTE-FDD mobile network will cover all major cities in the country in the first deployment phase, with Etisalat promising data download speeds of up to 100Mbps for its customers. More than 700 base stations were upgraded for the LTE network. Etisalat plans to upgrade up to 1,000 base stations by the end of 2011. Second-ranked du intended to launch commercial services by the end of 2011.

According to the TRA, there were 11.180mn mobile subscribers in the UAE at the end of June 2011. This represents growth of 1% q-o-q and 5% y-o-y. Strong net additions during H111 were driven by du, and the number of mobile subscribers in the UAE is now expected to reach 12.199mn by 2015, reflecting a penetration rate of 235%.

The fixed-line sector recorded positive growth in Q211, albeit it at a significantly slower rate than in the previous quarter. This suggests continued demand for fixed-line connections despite the rapid take-up of mobile services. This new trend suggests that there will be positive annual growth in the fixed sector over the next five years. The growing popularity of multi-play offerings will be a major growth driver of fixed-line connections in the UAE. By 2015, the number of fixed-line subscriptions is expected to reach to reach 1.876mn, reflecting a penetration rate of 36.1%. That said, it is worth mentioning that the rollout of LTE network services with capacity for high-speed data transmission poses a downside side to the uptake fixed-line services in the UAE.