Communications Regulatory Authority

Figure 1.12. Asia/Pacific: mobile network services market, breakdown between voice and
data (revenues in billion euro)
Source: IDC, 2006 | * Forecasts
Data
Voice
There are various countries of the area in which third-generation services have
been launched: among these, the main ones, alongside Japan, are Honk Kong, South
Korea, Australia, Singapore, and Malaysia. As for China, after a series of
postponements by the regulatory Authorities, it is planned for at least one license for the
supply of 3G services to be assigned by the end of the year. Such services should be
launched by the end of 2008, the year of the Olympic Games in China.
The availability of 3G services has, nevertheless, not yet had a significant impact
on the revenues from data services, which have grown as a result of the dissemination
of the services connected with the downloading of music and film clips. The low
dissemination of the third-generation services may be explained by the limited spending
capacity of the users (they are, in fact, very common only in countries, like Japan, that
have reached a high level of per capita income), as well as by the fact that the operators’
attention has been focused mainly on savings on voice calls rather than on the
introduction of value-added services.
An exception in this panorama is South Korea. In fact, this country stands out
for its use of multimedia content. In 2005 the mobile operator SK Telecom and TU
Media introduced a mobile television service that uses the satellite version of DMB
(Digital Multimedia Broadcasting) technology, based on the European Eureka 147
Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB) standard.
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