Informa Telecoms & Media forecasts that mobile operators in Central and Eastern Europe will increase their annual service revenues by more than 30% to $77 billion in 2013, thanks to the growth of data revenues which will reach $23.4 billion (up from $11.3 billion in 2008). As a result, the proportion of operators’ revenue generated by data is forecast to increase by more than half, from 19.4% in 2008 to 30.4% by 2013.
However, growth will also be driven by continued expansion of the mobile subscription base, which Informa forecasts will increase almost 20% — from 447 million at end-2008 to 534 million at end-2013. Moreover, according to Informa’s Abigail Browne, growth will also be fuelled by the increasing tendency for people to maintain two or more SIM cards in active use.
All said, that doesn’t mean voice revenues will decline in the period. Informa points to leading Russian operators MTS and VimpelCom as examples, which have seen average outgoing and incoming minutes of use (MOU) exceed 200 per subscription per month in 2008.
Furthermore, higher monthly rental incomes are also contributing to revenue growth in markets where operators have concentrated on migrating prepaid subscriptions onto contracts – a trend that will continue to have a positive impact on revenues in the region over the next five years.
But — and there’s always a “but” — the forecasts may be impacted by the ongoing financial crisis with leading operators in Central and Eastern Europe having registered a fall in revenue in Q4 2008 reported in US dollars. Still, this was due in large part to the sharp fall in the value of many of the region’s currencies against the dollar — the Ukrainian Hryvnia lost around 52% of its value, while Russian Ruble and Polish Zloty have both lost more than 30% in the period.
Data services remain the bright side, as operators have expressed optimism that these services will prove resilient to the economic conditions. We’ll have to wait and see…