$ 72 bn opportunity for mobile broadband technology vendors in 2010

Mobile Broadband services may have to wait little longer before actually entering India. But globally mobile service providers are eagerly looking forward to tap this opportunity as demand from consumers to have high-speed access to internet while on the move keeps on increasing rapidly.

The ongoing GSMA hosted Mobile World Congress saw global operators committing to invest as high as $ 72 billion capex in mobile broadband technologies in 2010. In fact capex on mobile broadband will comprise 52% of total capex announced by operators. This is a huge opportunity for telecom vendors who, apart from the Chinese players Huawei and ZTE, are struggling with their financial performance.

The greatest investment is set to come from Asia Pacific operators with collective investments pegged to be $ 34 billion. This continent will be followed by North America which will see investments of $ 19 billion while Europe will see investments of $ 14 billion.

The GSMA today announced that mobile operators around the world will invest up to $72 billion in Mobile Broadband* technologies in 2010. The new operator CAPEX investment data, compiled by global investment firm Deutsche Bank, reflects the continued consumer and enterprise demand forMobile Broadband services and the need for underlying infrastructure, and comes as global HSPA connections reach the 200 million milestone.

"The forecasted investment in Mobile Broadband technologies reflects the importance the mobile industry places on enabling consumers to access any type of content on the move - whatever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want," comments Michael O''Hara, Chief Marketing Officer at the GSMA. "HSPA and HSPA+ have become the dominant globalMobile Broadband technologies and are set to benefit from a significant proportion of this CAPEX investment, resulting in faster and more reliableMobile Broadband services being available to more subscribers around the world by the end of this year."

Mobile broadband connections are presently riding on HSPA technology with globally more than 20o million subscribers already hooked onto mobile broadband using the technology. It is estimated that the subscriber base for HSPA-based mobile broadband services will rise to 342 million b the end of 2010. Asia-Pac will have 116 million subscribers.