Recent Study: Ireland Telecommunications Report Q1 2013

New Fixed Networks research report from Business Monitor International is now available from Fast Market Research

by Bill Thompson

(WireNews+Co) - Boston, MA - 07 January 2013

BMI View: The Irish telecoms market has not been exempt from the stresses affecting the rest of the economy, putting operators under significant pressure. Both the mobile market and the dedicated mobile broadband market contracted in terms of subscriptions in H112, while there was only minimal growth in fixed broadband. There are, however, encouraging signs that operators are working to deal with these problems, not least of which is the decision of Vodafone and 3 to merge key parts of their networks in order to generate cost savings and push mobile broadband into underserved areas of the country.

Key Data

- The Q113 update includes BMI's extended five-year mobile, ARPU, fixed-line and broadband forecasts through to the end of 2017. It is also the first quarter including our new Risk/Reward Ratings methodology, which places a greater emphasis on the data and VAS market, as well as our in-house five-year real private final consumption growth forecasts.
- The second consecutive quarter of dedicated mobile broadband net subscription losses occurred in Q212. As a result total subscriptions declined 2.4% q-o-q leading us to revise our growth forecast for Ireland's broadband market.
- New data from 3 Ireland's parent company Hutchison Group show the operator to have a high proportion of postpaid subscriptions in its customer base at 69% while it also reports the highest ARPU in the market.

View Full Report Details and Table of Contents (http://www.fastmr.com/prod/511255_ireland_telecommunications_report_q1_2013.aspx) (http://www.fastmr.com/prod/511255_ireland_telecommunications_report_q1_2013.aspx)

Key Trends & Developments

Operators in Ireland have begun to rationalise traditional operations in response to a new economic reality, while at the same time looking for new areas of growth. For instance, in October 2012 Telefonica announced the implementation of the Jasper Wireless machine-to-machine (M2M) platform in Ireland targeted at the nascent M2M market in verticals such as smart metering, the connected car, security and asset tracking. The Jasper Wireless Control Centre is a software platform providing Telefonica's customers with global visibility of all SIMs on the mobile network, so has particular value to multinationals.

The wireline market is also gearing towards new areas of competition. In September 2012 Eircom announced the third phase of its fibre roll-out, which is expected to be commercially launched in 2013. Eircom will roll out fibre services to 125,000 households and business across eight counties. After the third phase is completed, Eircom will be able to serve a total of 350,000 premises with minimum connection speeds of 40Mbps.

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