By Michael Philpot, Charlie Davies

and Steven Hartley

In two new reports* the independent telecoms analyst unveils research conducted on the future of the broadband market, which shows that in 2015 approximately 3.6 billion people will be able to access broadband services, 50 per cent of the world’s population. The majority of users (1.4 billion) will access both fixed-line and mobile services, showing a trend towards convergence of services. These ‘dual access subscribers’ will mainly be in the developed markets of North America, Western Europe and Asia Pacific, where 84 per cent will have dual access.

Broadband access is now as important as other essential utilities such as gas, water and electricity. In the developed world it has become a basic requirement and penetration is above 60 per cent of households in many markets.

This convergence of services will see operators growing the revenues they generate from users by offering service bundles. However dual access use will not only happen in the developed word. Rapidly growing urban areas in the emerging markets where there is a larger proportion of high-value customers will also see growth in this area. Mobile broadband will continue to grow rapidly and by 2015 one billion people will use it as their only form of internet access, which is 28 per cent of all users globally or 13 per cent of the world’s population.

This will mainly be driven by emerging markets in Eastern Europe (where 38 per cent of broadband users will be mobile only in 2015), South and Central America (35 per cent) and Asia Pacific (34 per cent). The primary reason for the strength of the mobile broadband market in the emerging markets is a lack of fixed-line infrastructure. However the areas that see the greatest penetration are those where there are affordable devices and sufficiently capable mobile networks. For this reason the strongest markets for mobile broadband will be Eastern Europe, South and Central America and Asia Pacific.

Notes * ‘The Future of broadband: Fixed-Mobile Convergence’ and ‘The Future of Broadband: Fixed-Mobile Substitution’.

About Ovum

Michael Philpot, Charlie Davies and Steven Hartley are analysts at Ovum, which provides clients with independent and objective analysis, drawing upon over 400,000 interviews a year with business and technology, telecoms and sourcing decision-makers. Ovum is part of the Datamonitor group.