A new and fast-growing industry

A series of features makes the mobile telecommunications industry an interesting field of investigation for economists: the industry is experiencing very fast market growth combined with rapid technological change; regulatory design in setting market structure is playing a very important role; and oligopolistic competition is unfolding under various forms. The number of subscribers to mobile networks is growing at a rapid rate on a worldwide basis, as shown in figure 1.1. During the 1990s the number of mobile subscribers worldwide increased by an annual rate of 50 per cent. An important year was 2002, when the number of world mobile subscribers for the first time exceeded the number of fixed lines. The number of mobile subscribers was close to 1.2 billion at the end of 2002, while the number of fixed lines was slightly below 1.1 billion. The year 2002 therefore established at worldwide level what had already been observed for an increasing number of countries during the previous few years: mobile telecommunications is the most widespread access tool for telecommunications services. The mobile telecommunications industry has acquired as many users in some twenty years worldwide which took the fixed line telecommunications industry more than 120 years to achieve.

The timely and efficient supply of mobile telecommunication services has had a substantial impact on the economy, which also explains the extensive public interest in this industry. The actions of the industry regulator are of crucial importance for this.