‘The Asia-Pacific region is poised to overtake Europe as the worl...

that region and strong economic growth and greater consumer spending power contributed to positive growth in telecom services. Of 10 most profitable public telecom operators, 7 originate in Asia, and 2 of top 3 mobile economies worldwide (Taiwan and China and Hong Kong) are in that region, report said. It said mobile technologies contributed to raising total teledensity in many developing countries “that might otherwise have expected to remain locked into low levels of access.” Report said Asia-Pacific region, which has 160 million Internet users, accounts for 1/3 of total Internet users worldwide, more than any other region. Innovative schemes for community access, such as Indonesia’s warung internets (warnets), “have boosted Internet usage, as have prepaid cards and the boom in online gaming and e-government,” report said. Asia-Pacific also leads in broadband Internet with 5 Asian economies among top 12 worldwide in penetration, report said: “Capacity on Internet bandwidth has leapt eightfold over the last 2 years from 8 GBS at the end of 2001.” Report said Asia-Pacific region also distinguished itself in technology deployment and innovative and flexible nature of its policy models. It said in 2001 “the region emerged as the world’s largest telecommunication market,” and had added more than one new telephone user every second for last decade. S. Asia, currently least developed subregion with teledensity of 4 in 2001, “could provide the next great spurt of growth for the region as this is where the potential for ‘catch-up’ is greatest,” report said. It said Japan and S. Korea continued to be leaders in commercial deployment of 3G networks, but small countries such as Bhutan and Tonga also had “leapfrogged to leading edge technologies” such as wireless LAN and all-IP networks. Singapore, Hong Kong and China, report said, withdrew exclusivity of their operators’ licenses to introduce competition in international services, and Thailand and Vietnam found ways to introduce alternative suppliers and foreign investment into their markets. Author of report, Michael Minges, said Asia-Pacific region “continues to push the envelope of universal service. For those Asian countries that have crossed a threshold of 30 telephone subscribers per 100 inhabitants, the focus has shifted to providing service directly to the home and on keeping phone service affordable as cross-subsidies disappear.” Co-author Tim Kelly said: “The developing nations of Asia represent the real test of the potential of mobile communications to extend access to telecommunications services.” ITU’s Telecom Development Bureau Dir. Hamadoun Toure said: “The real reason for confidence [about Asia’s success] lies not so much in the numbers of telephone, mobile and Internet subscribers in the region, but rather the digital opportunities represented by the large numbers of those still waiting to be connected.”