Saturday, May 14, 2011

ICTs - Rapid growth across the developing world

[vanguard] ICT development has been astonishing in every region of the world over the past five years but recent developments have proven that the developing world and emerging markets actually drive the telecom successes in the entire world at the moment.

Admitted that over a hundred countries of the world has passed 100 percent in mobile penetration but the rave of the moment is Africa, one of the emerging markets, where there still exists untapped human market for mobile penetration.

At the last count, Eastern Europe is said to be counting about 126.6 percent mobile penetration at the end of 2010. Western Europe also is said to be trailing with 118 percent penetration. This is even when the North and Southern Americas are also said to be fast approaching saturation.

This clearly indicates that if the efforts to connect the next one billion unconnected people are to be intensified, it must focus in the emerging markets of Asia Pacific and Africa. Although the Asia Pacific region itself is also moving towards saturation with about 68.6 percent as at last quarter of 2010.

Interestingly, in Africa, mobile cellular penetration is also moving, closing at 41.4% in 2010. This was higher than it had been in Asia_Pacific three years earlier, where in 2007 it reached 36.4%. This development gives a good signal emerging markets potential to keep world development in progression

Yet statistics from the International Telecommunications Union, ITU, says that there were as many fixed broadband subscriptions in the developing world in 2010 as there were in the developed world in 2008. Two years earlier, developed world accounted for 251 million while the developing world is now accounting for 253 million. China alone is said to account for around half of all the developing world’s fixed broadband subscriptions.

How emerging markets drive world telecoms growth

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