The fixed voice telephony market continued its downward trend in 2018—and the decline shows no signs of stopping.
The Philippines has moved one step closer to breaking the cellular market duopoly of well-established operators PLDT/Smart and Globe Telecom.
Mindanao Islamic Telephone Company (Mislatel)–the new major player (NMP) that was licensed in November 2018–has formally been issued its Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity (CPCN). This paves the way for a planned commercial launch next year.
As more and more 5G mobile networks are launched, we’ve become curious about how the market will fare in the coming years.
According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Forecast Service, the cellular market as a whole will be home to almost 9 billion subscriptions by the end of 2025, up from around 7.8 billion in December 2018. This excludes fixed-wireless and machine-to-machine/internet of things connections.
Spain-based telecom infrastructure firm Cellnex announced a series of deals to acquire mobile towers in three European countries.
The $3 billion (EUR2.7 billion) transaction will see Cellnex buying network equipment from Iliad in France and Italy, as well as Salt in Switzerland.
The wireless services sector in Latin America and the Caribbean has stagnated in recent years.
The region was home to 690.4 million wireless subscribers at the end of June 2018, up slightly from 687.4 million six months before, but well down from the recent peak of 714.1 million at end-2014.
As countries reach market saturation, operators are now concentrating their efforts on wringing more revenue from existing users.