Wireless

March 15, 2004
GSM customer base continues to expand

UNITED KINGDOM -- GSM continues to show outstanding progress by providing state-of-the-art wireless service to an expanding customer base in established markets, while introducing the world's most successful digital technology to entirely new ones.

According to market data from EMC, GSM made excellent ground in 2003, adding over 198 million new subscribers to reach almost 990 million customers worldwide. This accounts for a 71 percent share of the total subscriptions, with over 500 operators in over 190 countries. GSM grew by a monthly average of 16.5 million new subscribers, outperforming the market and underlining GSM's position as the global service and standard for mobile communications. By the end of 2003, there were 2.8 million W-CDMA subscribers and 13 networks were offering commercial services, in addition to 15 networks in pre-commercial phase.

At the same time, strong industry take-up of EDGE extended to all regions of the world as most GSM operators came to appreciate the complementary attributes of GSM/EDGE and W-CDMA as the most efficient and flexible approach to 3G. Customer growth in GSM in the year 2003 was 80 percent of net subscriber additions. The strongest growth in subscriber numbers was in APAC, while China maintained its position as the world's largest mobile market. Most operators of TDMA and CDMA networks committed to implementing GSM/GPRS overlays, primarily in the Americas where GSM is growing strongly, just having passed 20 million subscribers landmark in total in Latin and Central America by the year end.

Unstoppable growth for GSM
Alan Hadden, president, the Global mobile Suppliers Association, said: "GSM growth over the past years continues to be spectacular. Handset sales growth was impressive, especially in the second half, with dozens of new models coming on to the market packed with exciting revenue-driving features. The number of new GSM subscribers in 2003 alone, 198 million, is greater than the entire cumulative subscriber base of the next biggest digital standard. These figures prove that GSM is the global wireless technology. There were 246 million new digital subscribers added in 2003, which took the global total of mobile phone users to 1.38 billion by end of 2003. Of these new subscribers, 80.5 percent or 198 million, selected GSM."

Asia Pacific experienced the most growth in 2003, adding 82.4 million GSM subscribers. In addition, Latin America and Eastern Europe were the other two regions where GSM was the only technology to increase its regional market share. In the US, GSM developed favorably. GSM subscribers in the US and Canada increased by 77 percent. Western Europe added 32 million new GSM subscribers, and in Eastern Europe GSM subscribers increased by over 34 million, continuing an amazing growth by 45 percent year-on-year. Russia contributed to the growth by over 17 million new subscribers during 2003.

Hadden added: "The market is poised for 3G take off from early 2004. Operators are investing in quality and capacity for their GSM networks to support voice and enhanced data services, enabled by W-CDMA and EDGE. The pace of introduction of advanced mobile multimedia services, and revenue growth, is likely to accelerate from."