The Central and Eastern European mobile market is forecast to grow by more than 10% per year to reach €58.4bn in 2011, according to a new report, ‘The Central and Eastern European Mobile Market - trends and forecasts 2006-2011’. Rising mobile phone penetration and the increasing adoption of mobile broadband access services across the region will drive this growth.

"Low fixed line penetration in the region means that mobile networks provide a viable alternative to ADSL for many subscribers - in some cases a wireless solution is the only broadband access option," says Alex Zadvorny, the report's co-author. "A number of operators in the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and elsewhere have introduced broadband access services based on EDGE, W-CDMA, CDMA450 EV-DO and other technologies, and are increasingly taking market share away from ADSL providers."

At the same time, providing basic voice services remains the single biggest revenue opportunity, particularly as many CEE markets are still far from saturation. "Mobile-only operators need to promote further fixed-mobile substitution, which will result in a stabilisation and growth of voice ARPU," noted Zadvorny.

Key findings from the new report include:

* Total mobile services revenue is forecast to grow at a compound average growth rate (CAGR) of 11.4% from €30.6bn in 2005 to €58.4bn in 2011 - chart available to journalists on request. This compares to CAGR of 5.0% over the same period for Western Europe.

* Active mobile penetration in CEE was 66.0% at the end of 2005 (compared to 96.0% in Western Europe) and is forecast to grow to 96.2% by 2011

* ARPU is expected to bottom out and recover, reaching €12.7 by 2011 (up from €11.3 in 2005). ARPU growth will be fuelled by spend on non-messaging data services (which will contribute €0.6 and €2.1 to the total ARPU in 2005 and 2011 respectively). Voice ARPU will stabilise and gradually recover.

This new report analyses current trends in the Central and Eastern European mobile market, including the role of fixed-mobile substitution, alternative wireless technologies and regulation. It presents comprehensive forecasts for the region as a whole, as well as for the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine. Forecasts are broken down by subscriber numbers, ARPU, revenue, retail spend and average spend per user (ASPU) for four market segments (residential prepaid, residential contract, SMEs, large corporations), three service categories (voice, person-to-person messaging and other data services) and four technology generations (2G, 2.5G, 3G and 3.5G).
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