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Mobile phone units to overtake fixed line units
12 Feb 2002
The number of mobile phones currently in use in Australia is almost set to overtake the number of landlines being used.
There are approximately 11 million mobile phones being used in Australia with roughly the same number of fixed lines in use. The number of mobile phones has doubled over the last two and half years.
The Australian ratio of mobiles to landlines reflects what is also happening around the world. There are almost one billion mobile phones in use around the world with about 1.045 billion fixed lines. Already more than 12 countries have more mobiles than fixed lines, including Hong Kong, Taiwan, Iceland, Italy and Portugal.
However, when comparing the ratio of actual mobile use to landline use in Australia, the ratio is more disparate than in some other countries. This means that although we have roughly the same number of mobiles as landlines, we tend to make more calls on landlines. Calls on mobiles make up about 30 per cent of call traffic. Telecommunications industry analyst Paul Budde suggests this is because mobile call rates are high compared to fixed line call rates and says that “in Australia we basically have a duopoly between Telstra and Optus, and they keep prices as high as possible to protect their profits. That is hampering the uptake of mobile usage.”
www.zdnet.com.au 11/2/02
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