Crecimiento de la demanda por servicios de comunicación móviles. Mitos y realidades (International Mobile Demand Growth: Myths and Reality)
30 September 2005
By Dr. Agustin Ros and former NERA Vice President Dr. Aniruddha Banerjee
In recent years, global mobile telephony has experienced spectacular demand growth that is unmatched by anything in the long history of fixed network-based telecommunications. The International Telecommunications Union estimates that, in 2002, the number of mobile subscribers worldwide (over 1.15 billion) surpassed the number of fixed main lines in service (nearly 1.13 billion) for the first time. Yet, as recently as 1991, there were only 16 million mobile subscribers as compared to 546 million fixed main lines worldwide, a ratio of 1:34. Are there patterns to the spread of mobile telephony, alongside conventional fixed telephony, in different parts of the world?
In this article, published in the September 2005 issue of AHCIET Móvil, NERA Vice President Dr. Agustin Ros and former Vice President Dr. Aniruddha Banerjee use cluster analysis and related statistical techniques on a panel of 61 countries (representing different regions and levels of socio-economic development) to answer that question. The authors conclude that technological substitution in some countries, and economic substitution in others, may explain the observed patterns of development in global fixed and mobile telephony.
