Growth in mobile broadband subscribers throughout Europe

Europe is currently leading the way with the highest number of mobile broadband subscribers of any region even as the number of subscribers around the world continues to increase.

It is expected that by the end of the year the constantly increasing number of mobile broadband users throughout the world is set to hit 600 million.

By 2008 the number of subscribers to mobile broadband had already overtaken the number of fixed line subscribers and Europe as well as the Asia and Pacific market currently has the largest numbers according to the recent report from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).

A recent statement from the chief executive of Carphone Warehouse, Charles Dunstone said that people were now changing back to fixed line broadband services and that UK sales of mobile broadband services had reached their peak, and this statement came out at the same time as the ITU report.

Dunstone said in a recent interview “We get a sense that the mobile broadband thing has peaked. We are seeing some of those people begin to realise that the bandwidth you get on mobile is so much less than you get on a fixed line. Mobile broadband is increasingly a supplementary rather than a substitutional thing, and an increasing proportion of Carphone sales are of pre-pay dongles.”

The continuing growth of fixed line broadband was, however, confirmed by the ITU report, which showed that for every 1000 people in Europe 200 subscribe to fixed line broadband, whilst only 1 in every 1000 subscribe in Africa, although compared to the sharp upturn in mobile broadband subscriptions the graphing shows that fixed line subscriptions are moving at a much slower and steadier rate.

This all points towards the fact that even if fixed line broadband is making a comeback over mobile broadband it is likely to take a long time to get there.

Source – It Pro