High-Speed Packet Access 'to drive growth'
Advanced broadband cellular technology called High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) will drive the growth of the Asia-Pacific telecom market, according to Jan Signell, Ericsson's president for the region.
Speaking on the sidelines of the 3GSM World Congress 2007 telecom fair, which ran for three days last week in Barcelona, Signell said multimedia content routed through the HSPA system was rising as people demand fast connection speed. HSPA enables 3G wireless cellular networks to provide the faster data-transmission speed. Thailand's National Telecommunications Commission has yet to issue licences to operate 3G services. Signell added that there were commercial and residential HSPA systems in Singapore and Malaysia. Ericsson is confident they will spread quickly wherever they are installed throughout the region. With 42-per-cent annual revenue growth, the Asia-Pacific is the company's best-performing region. Ericsson sees the countries in the region falling into three groups. Those with "huge" potential growth are Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines. The four have a total population of about 600 million, of which 140 million are mobile-phone users and one million are fixed broadband subscribers. Counties with high mobile-phone growth rates are Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei, with 64 million mobile-phone users and three million fixed broadband users. Cambodia, Laos and Burma comprise the start-up market, with three million mobile-phone users. Hans O Karlsson, president and country manager of Ericsson (Thailand), said the company this year expects to see more revenue and more projects in Thailand that Ericsson can achieve. The company's main targets include TOT, CAT Telecom, Advanced Info Service, Total Access Communication (DTAC) and the Provincial Electricity Authority. DTAC chief executive Sigve Brekke, also speaking at the fair, said that while Nokia is now DTAC's sole network supplier, it might consider adding one more supplier in its plans for network investment this year. Talking about the competition from the China's network vendors, Karlsson added that Ericsson also had production plants in China, which enable it to offer products at competitive prices.
Usanee Mongkolporn
The Nation
Barcelona, Spain
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