OSP Central - International Update

Mobile data revenue will almost triple from $6.9 billion at the end of 2010 to $19 billion by 2015, thanks to a rapid adoption of mobile broadband and mobile browsing services, according to a new report from Pyramid Research.

Brazil: Mobile Data and Prepaid Mobile Drive Unprecedented Telecom Revenue Growth by 2015 offers a precise profile of the country's telecommunications, media and technology sectors based on proprietary data from Pyramid's research in the market. It provides detailed competitive analysis of both the fixed and mobile sectors, tracks the market shares of technologies and services and monitors the introduction and spread of new technologies.

The prepaid mobile market, addressed to medium- and low-income social classes, is expected to grow rapidly, as well. "Since prepaid rates in the country are considered expensive by the population, a new driver for new subscriptions and therefore penetration has formed: people with multiple mobile subscriptions (multiple SIM cards)," he says. "Many subscribers are willing to only make intra-network calls and therefore have two or three cell phone lines from different operators. That makes user penetration 83 percent, 22 percentage points less than total mobile penetration," indicates Caetano.

"Despite finally surpassing the 100 percent mark in 2010, the mobile penetration rate in the country is still low when compared with other countries in the region, such as Argentina, where it surpasses 130 percent," says Caetano. "However, regulation forcing mobile operators to deploy 3G services throughout the country in the next four years will increase the number of mobile users, many of them using more data," he adds.

"Pyramid expects higher ARPS to come with new subscriptions, mostly driven by data users. Prepaid mobile data, a service that today is scarce in the country, is expected to move the industry, reshaping the market for mobile operators," he notes.