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Stats14 December 2004Mobile phones are expected to generate more money this year than traditional fixed-line services for the first time due to surging demand in developing countries such as China, India and Russia, says the ITU. By the middle of 2004 there were 1.5 billion mobile phone subscribers compared with 1.2 billion fixed-line customers around the world, it noted. In addition, China was projected to overtake the United States as the world's largest broadband Internet market, said the study by the UN's International Telecommunications Union (ITU). The telecom industry, comprising voice data, video and text services, was worth 1.1 trillion dollars (825 billion euros) in 2003 and the figure was expected to rise this year, an ITU spokesman said. "Furthermore, it is likely that global revenues from mobile networks will exceed those from global fixed-line networks for the first time during 2004," said the report, Trends in Telecommunications Reform 2004/2005. "Three nations have led the surge in mobile subscribers. Those are China, India and Russia," said Susan Schorr, a regulatory officer at the ITU. "Although the developed world still accounts for the largest segment of the global telecommunications sector by value, the developing world is where much of the new growth in the number of subscribers is occurring and where most of the potential for future growth resides," she told a news conference. Developing nations comprised 56 percent of the world's mobile phone subscribers by June, while between 2000 and mid-2004 they accounted for almost 79 percent of the new growth in the market, the report said. Internet use was also booming, particularly among poorer nations, thanks to the wider use of wireless platforms that erased the need to install expensive cables, ITU experts said. Broadband Internet subscribers grew to 102 million people by end-2003 in about 100 countries where such services are available, compared with 65 million a year earlier -- a growth rate of 57 percent. "In terms of absolute subscribers, the United States was the largest single broadband market at the start of 2004, with over 25 million subscribers, but that might not hold true much longer," the ITU predicted. China added 11 million new broadband users in 2003 to reach 13.5 million. "At current rates of growth, it will overtake the United States by the end of 2004 as the economy with the most broadband users," the ITU said
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