Top-20 Telecom Groups - based on proportionate subscribers

Stuttgart, Germany — 19th Oct 2006 — InfoCom Top-20 telecom groups takes into account the number of subscribers (fixed, mobile and Internet) based on the group’s proportionate shareholding in other companies (see Fig. 1). For 2Q06, MII China group outranked number two Vodafone by a substantial lead of about 460m subscribers, for a total of 665m subscribers, which are all based in China. The majority of the subscrib-ers are still from fixed line companies that come from MII China’s holdings in China Telecom and China Netcom, while MII China’s mobile subscribers can be attributed to its 75% holding in China Mobile.

Vodafone and 3rd place holder Telefónica have a wider reach in terms of territories: both have subscribers based in Western and Eastern Europe. Vodafone has holdings in Western and Eastern Europe as well as the US, with the markets that have proportion-ate subscribers totalling 20m and above being Germany, Italy and the US. Telefónica has shareholdings in Latin American companies but has reached Eastern Europe through its purchase of Cesky Telecom in 2005 and other Western European countries through its acquisition of O2. Deutsche Telekom also has a number of holdings in East-ern Europe, some of which are incumbents (e.g. Croatia’s T-Hrvatski Telecom and Hungary’s Magyar Telekom) and has mobile and Internet operations in Western Europe and North America (e.g. T-Mobile Germany, UK and USA) to make it reach 4th place with about 168m subscribers.

Other Western European incumbents that have made it to the list are France Télécom (7th), Telecom Italia (11th), Telenor (12th), TeliaSonera (15th), Portugal Telecom (19th) and BT (20th). Another company, apart from MII China or China Unicom, that made it into the top-20 without having overseas operations is MIT India, which managed to reach 13th place. Although its overall population is close to China’s, India, in terms of fixed line or mobile subscribers, still is significantly behind China. Rounding off the list is BT, which has about 37m proportionate subscribers in 2Q06, replacing 1Q06’s 20th place holder Turkcell.

Fig. 1–Top 20 telecom groups based on proportionate subscribers in millions at 2Q06


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