Revenues from broadband double

Dubai: The wireless broadband business in the Middle East saw a 100 per cent increase in revenues in the past year, driving the number up to $1.5 billion (Dh5.5 billion), industry experts said.

Nicholas Jotischky, principal analyst for mobile research at Informa Telecoms and Media, industry researchers and exhibition analysts, told Gulf News: "We estimate the non-voice market and the voice market and data revenues for the entire Middle East region increased quite substantially in terms of actually data revenues for all the operators in the region."

A 100 per cent increase was experienced from third quarter 2007 to the same period this year.

"This is an exciting market. The growth is phenomenal, which suggests that consumers are spending more on data services," Jotischky said.

Wireless broadband has seen a lot of network building in the region. "It's a thriving part of the market, and necessarily so because voice revenues are stagnating globally," he added.

The Middle East currently has 133 million mobile voice subscribers, growing at a year-on-year rate of 37 per cent, according to latest statistics by the researcher.

Most of this growth is coming from Iran. The country's penetration jumped from 17 per cent to 60 per cent within two years, the analyst said.

Matthew Reed, senior analyst at Informa, said that Iran is expected to be very attractive.

"It is the biggest opportunity in the region for investors. Next year, Iran will be the single largest growth market in the region with 11 million new mobile subscribers," Reed said.

Speaking on the impact of the global economic crisis in the Middle East, Jotischky said that it is too early to tell.

"Even globally, we are only beginning to see some signs of cuts on capital expenditure. We are not seeing that in the Middle East and we don't expect to until well into 2009," he said.

On the upside, he said that operators are using the situation as an opportunity to expand further into new markets, where opposition would have been expected in the past from European competitors who are now worrying more about their domestic markets back home.

Etisalat chairman Mohammad Omran said the operator did not have any loans and had good cash flows, with the economic situation giving them a lot of confidence.

"The global meltdown is actually very good for us as opportunities have become available at much lower costs that earlier. So it is more positive for us than negative," he said.