Over 80% of new subscribers are on 3g network

3G subscribers currently account for 66% of total mobile subscribers,up from 47% in just a year.

According to a research by Kim Eng, IDA said mobile subscriber net-adds slowed to about 19,000 in January 2011. Fortunately, the slowdown was due to continued heavy switching from the 2G network to 3G. While 3G net-adds still slowed to 88,500 in January, subscriber additions in the first three Action & Recommendation months of the year are usually slower than the quarter before. Therefore, we are not too This year is likely to be a year of the status quo. terribly alarmed by this data point and would If operators stay rational and avoid a market share grab, our strategy would still be to prefer wait for another month of data to confirm.

With the growing proliferation of smartphones with data plans, we expect net-add growth to remain positive. In fact, operator feedback in the past two quarters has been that 80-90% of new subscribers nowadays are on the 3G network. 3G subscriptions have surged since the iPhone 3GS was introduced in July 2009, and this was further fuelled by the launch of the iPhone 4 in July the following year. 3G subs currently account for 66% of total mobile subs, up from 47% in just a year.

Fibre is not yet mainstream as only 60% of all residential and business premises has been wired up as at last December. Hence, the takeup of fibre plans has mainly been by corporates who needed the extra speed and early adopters. According to IDA, the number of subscribers on “other” Internet access platforms including fibre
stood at 16,800 in January this year, up from an average of 5,600 before the Next Generation Nationwide Broadband Network (NGNBN) service plans were launched in September 2010. This suggests about 10,000 plans (about 2,500 per quarter) have been taken up so far. It is still early days but it is an encouraging start.