Written by: Michael Bjärhov and Christer Friberg

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The global number of mobile subscriptions is predicted to grow from 1.3 billion as of January 1, 2004 to more than 2.2 billion by the end 2008. Most of this growth will occur in emerging new-growth markets, which will drive penetration among the low-spending subscriber segment.

Two key technologies will cater for this subscriber growth: GSM (and its evolution to WCDMA) and CDMA. This focus of this article is on GSM technology, which has been deployed in every major market except Japan and Korea, has a strong market position with extensive availability of lowcost mobile terminals, and has an evolution path to increased capacity and faster data services.

The emphasis in new-growth markets is on increasing subscriber penetration, in particular, the segment of population which could not previously afford mobile telephony services or which lived outside of areas with mobile coverage.

Subscriber penetration in many “mature” markets is now saturated. So instead of focusing on growth in these markets, the main emphasis is on increasing revenue per subscriber by introducing advanced features and services.

This article describes the operator challenges and gives an in-depth description of how Ericsson’s Expander Radio Coverage solutions can support operators when expanding into new, untapped markets.

[First published in Ericsson Review no. 01, 2004]