Mobile operators in emerging markets in Asia, Eastern Europe and Africa have a higher capex spend as a proportion of total revenues than their counterparts in Western Europe and the USA, according to new research by Informa Telecoms & Media. Emerging market players MobiNil, VimpelCom, Bharti Televentures of India and Indonesia's Telkomsel had capex to revenue ratios of 35-65% in Q2 2005, according to World Cellular Operator Benchmarks, a quarterly report from Informa Telecoms & Media. This compared with 22% for Verizon Wireless of the USA, and 10% for South Korea's KTF  during the same period.

"Operators in fast growth markets such as Russia and India are obliged to invest heavily in increasing capacity and coverage in order to  sustain subscriber and revenue growth going forward" said John Everington, Senior Research Analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media. "This is less of an issue for operators in more developed markets, where subscriber growth has slowed."

MobiNil and VimpelCom also scored highly in terms of EBITDA margins in comparison with mobile operators in the USA and Europe such as Sprint and KPN. VimpelCom reported an EBITDA margin of 51.4% in Q22005, compared with 30.5% across KPN's mobile operations in the same period.
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