Growth of mobile service revenues on the Belgian market in the third quarter of this year picked up momentum but is expected to slow down again in 2007, according to a report from Telecompaper. Mobile service revenues in Belgium amounted to EUR 1.05 billion in the third quarter, up 1.8 percent from the previous quarter and up 5.7 percent from EUR 992 million in the same period last year.
Although mobile service revenues were fairly weak in the first quarter, revenue growth in the second and in particular the third quarter suggest a growth of between 4 percent and 5 percent this year. Telecompaper forecasts that the market will grow around EUR 4.1 billion in 2006, up EUR from 3.9 billion in 2005. However, revenue growth is expected to slow down to between 3.5 percent and 4.5 percent in 2007 and to between 3 percent and 5 percent in 2008.
As a result of a good first quarter, operator Base increased its market share to 19.9 percent at the end of September 2006 and rival Mobistar was slightly up with a gain of 0.1 percent to end September 2006 with a share of 33.7 pecent. The market share of incumbent Belgacom continued to fall and stood at 46.4 percent at the end of September, down from 47.3 percent at the end of June 2006.
The number of mobile customers continues to grow and increased 1.6 percent to 9.14 million customers at the end of September 2006, up from 9.00 million customers at the end of June 2006. Mobile customer growth in each of the quarters this year has been stronger than the quarterly growth rates throughout 2005. In other words, the Belgian market is growing much faster in terms of customer growth than last year.
Mobile voice service revenues totalled EUR 868 million in the third quarter of 2006, up 1.0 percent compared to the previous quarter, when voice service revenues amounted to EUR 859 million. Voice service revenues are up 4.7 percent from the same quarter last year. Non-voice revenues also grew in the quarter to EUR 181 million, up 5.7 percent from EUR 171 million in the previous quarter. Revenues for non-voice services were fairly weak during the first and second quarter but picked up in the third quarter, increasing their share of service revenues to 17.3 percent during the quarter.
