Europe - Telecoms, Mobile and Broadband in the Balkans East - Greece, Romania, Bulgaria: new report from Bharatbook

Annual publication 2008 Europe - Telecoms, Mobile and Broadband in Balkans (East) profiles the region’s three largest countries: Greece, Bulgaria and Romania.

Impacting on the telecom markets of these three countries is EU-mandated competition, decreasing prices and leading to the introduction of new services by both competing operators and incumbents alike. This report offers an informative insight into the Balkans (East) region, covering regulatory developments, major players in the fixed-line, broadband, convergence and mobile markets, the development of new product offerings for the aforementioned markets, as well as presenting a wide variety of industry-related statistics in addition to broadband penetration forecasts to the year 2018.

Key highlights:
• Customer churn levels and the level of competition is expected to increase in Romania in 2009 following the introduction of number portability for both the fixed and mobile markets in October 2008. For the country overview, see chapter 3, page 55.
• Competition in Bulgaria and Romania will improve in the future as each country’s respective regulator completes market analyses during 2009/10 and imposes obligations on SMP operators (ie, incumbents) to improve competition, particularly in fixed-line markets.
• Healthy infrastructure-based competition exists in the broadband markets of Bulgaria and Romania due to well established cable TV providers as well as a large number of informal LANs.
• Within Greece the actions of the regulator has improved the wholesale market, with wholesale accounting for over 40% of total DSL connections, the overarching technology platform for broadband access in Greece. For the country overview, see chapter 2, page 26.
• The state of the wholesale DSL market in Bulgaria and Romania is expected to pick up once regulators complete market analyses during 2009/10 and oblige incumbents to offer network access.
• IPTV take up is on the rise in all three countries, as incumbents and telecom operators acquire additional content and improve service offerings. In Bulgaria and Romania cable operators are fighting back by launching triple play offerings.
• Mobile operators have once again focused on mobile data, leveraging now widely-available EDGE/WCDMA/HSDPA networks to launch aggressively priced mobile broadband access with prepaid data bundles.
• With mobile voice markets at saturation, the underdeveloped mobile broadband market is the new revenue growth opportunity and hence competitive battleground for mobile operators, with competition expected to put downward pressure on tariffs in 2009 and beyond. This in turn will negatively impact other wireless broadband providers, particularly the WiMAX service providers, given the market power of the mobile operators and the reach of their networks.

Balkans (East) – mobile subscribers and penetration rate – March 2008
Country Subscribers Penetration
Bulgaria 10,000,000 137%
Greece 15,400,000 138%
Romania 24,600,000 110%
(Source: Based on ITU and Global Mobile data)

This report Subjects include:

Market and industry analyses, trends and developments
Facts, figures, statistics and broadband forecasts to 2017
Industry and regulatory issues
Research, Marketing, Benchmarking
Major Players, Revenues, Subscribers, Network deployments
VoIP, ADSL, ADSL2+, FttH, LAN, WiFi, WiMAX, IPTV, VoD, triple play, digital TV, DTTV, 3G, i-mode and HSDPA

For more information please visit: http://www.bharatbook.com/productdetail.asp?id=84342

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