Iran's Mobile Market Grew 100% In 2006
Mar 30, 2007
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Mobile industry experts feel that increased competition and reduction in connection and activation fees led to 100% growth in mobile market in Iran in 2006.
With new competitors and reduction in the fees for connection and activation, mobile market in Iran witnessed 100% growth in 2006.
During the last year, there was an increase in the number of cellular users in Iran says Mohammad Soleymani, minister, Information and Communication Technology (ICT). He states that the mobile market has witnessed a growth from 8.5 million in previous year to 16.7 million in March 2006. He added that the phone network coverage had reached more than 1,016 cities in the country. It is the state owned Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI) that dominates the market along with other two operators namely, Taliya and MTN Irancell reflects the news published in Iranian.Ws.
Mobile Communication Company of Iran (MCCI) is planning to expand its network and this made millions of Iranians to pay about US$ 600 for pre-registering for the mobile phone services. There is a visible boom in the mobile phone industry of Iran; statistics reveal that about 11 million text messages are sent each day. In Iran, there are about 8.5 million mobile phone subscribers.
With the introduction of competition and that of prepaid in the country the pace of growth will also increase. Until the year 2004, the country had only post-paid subscriptions, thus introduction of pre paid subscription will sure boost the growth. Cheaper prepaid packages are introduced by new operators. These new packages cost around 1.5 million rials.
It is the TCI that introduced prepaid subscription in the year 2005 for the first time. However, only 30 percent of the net additions of 2005 are expected to be the prepaid platform of TCI. With the coming of new entrants about 84% of the net additions from the year 2006 to 2010 are expected to happen in the prepaid platform.
Research analyst at RNCOS finds out, “With the introduction of new competitions there will be a reduction in the connection and activation fees in par with the global standards. With the increase in per minute tariffs there should be a rise in the average revenue per subscriber (ARPS) in local currency. Forcing an increase of per minute tariffs is because of the fact that the TCI enjoyed a good revenue increase and EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization) margins primarily due to the high connection fees”.
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