Telecommunications subscriptions and revenue are rising despite l...

dampen the investment plans of many operators and may slow investments in core networks, it said. The crisis could also hurt new entrants who depend on access to capital to expand and compete with better-funded incumbents, it said. Revenue growth has been driven by people’s increasing reliance on telecommunications services for social and economic interactions, the report said. Households in OECD countries spend an average of 2.2 percent of their budgets on such services even during financial downturns, it said. Telecommunications is a $1.2 trillion market in the OECD and markets have expanded at around 6 percent per year since 1990, it said. Voice is still the largest revenue source for operators despite lower fixed and mobile calling prices. The mobile and broadband sectors have seen major growth since 2007, the report said. Together, subscriptions accounted for 74 percent of all communication subscriptions in 2007, and OECD states now have a mobile penetration of 96.1 subscribers per 100 inhabitants. The other area of growth, broadband, is now the dominant fixed-access method in all OECD countries, the report said. DSL is still the leading technology, followed by cable and fiber, it said. At the same time, prices on all platforms have fallen since 2007, the report sad. Broadband prices dropped significantly between 2005 and 2008 as operators gained new customers and bundled broadband with other services, it said. The growth in broadband subscriptions helped fuel the expansion of the Internet. The number of Internet hosts was 540 million in January 2008, more than one-half of which had a generic top-level domain rather than a country-code domain, it said. The expanding number of networks and devices attached to them has led to a shortage of unique Internet addresses, but operators must switch to Internet Protocol version 6 before IPv4 addresses run out in 2011 or 2012, it said. Companies are also investing heavily in new high-speed broadband networks, changing the audiovisual landscape, the report said. But traditional linear content diffusion still holds an advantage over other media because most homes have TVs, it said. Broadband is viewed as a way to boost productivity and growth but its impact depends on competition, it said. Facilities- based competition may be hard to develop in some markets, and investment in next-generation access networks is mostly occurring in urban areas, it said. This raises questions about the potential for new digital geographic divides and whether alternative technologies such as high-speed wireless can provide rural and remote areas with enough capacity for emerging services, it said. Regulatory frameworks, which reached a certain level of stability and maturity in the last decade, are now being reviewed to ensure there’s competition, it said.