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Research and Markets Adds Report: '2008 Asian - Telecommunications
Infrastructure'
(Wireless News Via Acquire Media NewsEdge)
Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "2008 Asian -
Telecommunications Infrastructure" report to its offerings.
In a release, Research and Markets noted that report highlights include:
The report looks at the infrastructure that supports Asia's
telecommunications markets. The regional market has been continuing its
overall strong growth phase and with that there has been a
correspondingly strong development of infrastructure. The report looks
at the telecom infrastructure in each of the region's economies.
Governments across Asia have long recognised - some earlier than others
- that there needed to be some encouragement of private sector
investment to meet the demand for the all-important investment capital
in the telecom sector. At the same time, it was generally well
recognised that this strategy could not rely on local investment alone,
and would inevitably mean a substantial level of foreign investment. Of
course, despite this recognition, there has nevertheless been some
resistance within governments to opening up the telecom sector to
foreign investors and as a consequence the level of 'encouragement' has
been variable.
The changing nature of the telecom market has also had a major impact
on the approach to investment in infrastructure. With shifting revenue
patterns across the market segments and falling ARPUs on many services,
operators have been more selective about what they actually invest in.
Telecom operators throughout Asia have been increasing investment
levels on the back of carefully considered investment strategies. This
has seen companies shifting business focus, looking for new ways to add
value to existing revenue streams; it has also seen a strong desire to
leverage new value from infrastructure that is already in place.
Over a number of decades the economies of Asia have progressively built
substantial fixed-line national networks followed by national mobile
networks. In many of the developing nations of the region, the building
of fixed-line infrastructure was not far advanced before it was
overwhelmed by the introduction of mobile infrastructure. This has
created the phenomenon of 'substitution' in many of the markets of Asia
(where mobile services perform the function of the non-existent fixed
services.) Nevertheless, despite the unevenness in disposition, fixed
infrastructure remains an important component in the overall
development of the region's telecom sector. By March 2008, Asia had
infrastructure in place supporting a total of more than two billion
telephone subscribers; of these, more than 630 million were fixed-line
subscribers, the remainder of course being mobile subscribers.
More recently the focus of infrastructure building has shifted to the
upgrading of domestic telecoms networks to Next Generation Networks.
Basically, this process is seeing large scale investment by Asia's
leading telecoms markets in new-generation IP-based telecommunications
networks. Those countries that have government backing for NGN roll-out
are the ones that are setting the pace. Even some of the
lesser-developed markets are pushing hard on this front.
In addition to the national networks, international connectivity
remains central to the overall effectiveness of the region's
telecommunications services. Submarine cable routes criss-cross the
Asia Pacific area, providing both intra-regional and inter-regional
networks. This sector of the market has been characterised by
fluctuating supply and demand, which in turn has seen somewhat erratic
investment strategies. Over-supply of capacity has been a phenomenon in
the market. More recently it has been recognised that investments need
to be more focused on growth and less speculative. Starting in 2007, a
series of new submarine cable projects were being proposed in the
region, mainly trans-Pacific networks aimed at a particular predicted
shortfall in capacity between Asia and the US as Asia's broadband usage
started to rapidly increase. However, it was not certain that all these
projects would come to fruition, as their respective business cases
undergo closer scrutiny.
In the meantime, players operating within the region, including VSNL,
FLAG Telecom and PacNet (formerly Asia Netcom), among others, were
lighting additional wavelength and fibre pairs on an 'as-needed' basis.
By adopting this incremental approach to managing spare circuit
inventories the operators were working to bring lit bandwidth supply
and bandwidth demand into balance. Operators needed to make more of
what capacity they already had before getting involved in a new round
of submarine network construction and another boom. As the demand for
wholesale services has continued to rise in Asia, still driven in the
short term by voice services, but in the longer term by data services,
there has been a boom in IP-based services, with the volume of
international VoIP traffic into and out of Asia increasing at a rapid
rate at the expense of the traditional IDD traffic. In the short term
this has distorted the demand for bandwidth. However, in the longer
term, this will inevitably lead to demand for more optical fibre
networks to support the necessary increased bandwidth.
Asia - key developments in infrastructure - 2007 - 2008:
- By March 2008, Asia had networks and infrastructure supporting a
total of more than two billion telephone subscribers; of these, 630
million were fixed-line subscribers and just over 1.4 billion were
mobile subscribers; - Asia's developed markets had started building
their NGNs, with IP shaping as the primary delivery platform for
telecom services across the region; - The region's mobile market was
growing at an annual rate of almost 30 percent by mid-2008, maintaining
the pressure on operators to expand infrastructure to support their
growing subscriber bases and usage levels; - It is estimated that Asia
needs to invest at least US$1 trillion in new infrastructure over the
next ten years to meet projected demand; - Asia's submarine cable
market was again attracting investor interest as the earlier
over-supply problem seems dissipated and increasing demand for
bandwidth puts new pressure on capacity; - Redundancy also remained a
critical issue for submarine cable systems, providing an additional
incentive for fresh investment in this form of infrastructure; - The
region saw a number of new satellite launches in 2007/08 and more were
scheduled as a steadier pattern of growth in this segment of the market
was observed.
Companies Mentioned:
- Globecomm - AWCC's microwave ring - Grameen Telecom - E-Shabtog -
Greater Mekong Subregion Telecommunications Cooperation Group -
ChinaNet - ShinSat/China Satcom - China Unicom - China Telecom - China
Netcom - China Mobile - Jitong Network Corp.
- China Satcom - Level 3 Communications Ltd - Teleglobe (VSNL
International) - Asia Netcom (formerly Asia Global Crossing) - China
Unicom (Hong Kong) Group Ltd - Hutchison Global Telecommunications
(Hong Kong) - C2C Pte Ltd - MCI (WorldCom) - Telstra/PCCW strategy -
Tricom Asia - AsiaSat - APStar
Report highlights:
http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/15540c/2008_asian_telec
((Comments on this story may be sent to newsdesk@closeupmedia.com))
((Distributed on behalf of 10Meters via M2 Communications Ltd -
http://www.m2.com))
((10Meters - http://www.10meters.com))
Copyright ? 2008 Wireless News
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