Original telecommunications market research and telecommunications sector trend analysis for the national telecommunications industry.

Competitive intelligence, regional telecommunications company rankings and SWOT analyses on international and domestic telecommunications companies.

The Report provides industry professionals and researchers, operators, equipment suppliers and vendors, corporate and financial services analysts and regulatory bodies with independent forecasts and competitive intelligence on the national telecommunications industry.

" The Asia Telecommunications Report is used for benchmarking industry views against BMI's independent forecasts; for market research and analysis of industry trends. It also provides competitive intelligence on leading companies. "
Chi-Wen Tsai, Managing Director, ROHDE & SCHWARZ Taiwan Ltd

Key Benefits of Report

-Benchmark BMI's Independent 5-Year Telecommunications Industry Forecast to test other views - a key input for successful budgeting and strategic business planning in the national telecommunications market.
-Target Business Opportunities & Risks in the Telecommunications Sector through our reviews of latest industry trends, regulatory changes, and major deals, projects and investments.
-Exploit Latest Competitive Telecommunications Intelligence & company SWOTS on your competitors and peers through company rankings by sales, market share, investments and leading products and services.

Executive Summary
Summary of BMI's key industry forecasts and trend analysis, covering ICT, fixed-line, mobile and internet markets, and headline news of key industry events from the latest quarter.

Market Overview
At-a-glance outlook of the structure, size and value of the industry, including an overview of key players and a snapshot of regional penetration rates for fixed-line, mobile and internet markets.

Business Environment Rankings
BMI provides a cross-border analysis of telecoms regulatory systems across regional markets, and their investor prospects, discussing the merits and downfalls of each country's business environment, and ranking them in order of competitiveness. The rankings take into account industry factors, such as Market Maturity, Growth Potential, Competitive Environment and Licensing Framework in addition to BMI's political and economic risk ratings.

BMI 5-Year Industry Forecast
Historic data series and 5-year forecasts to end-2012 for all key industry indicators (see list below), supported by explicit assumptions, plus analysis of key downside risks to the main forecast.

Fixed-Line Telephony - Telephone Lines ('000); Telephone Lines/100 Inhabitants;
Cellular Telephony - Phone Subscribers ('000); Mobile Phone Subscribers/ 100 Inhabitants; Mobile Phone Subscribers/100 Fixed Line Subscribers;
Internet Markets - Internet Users ('000); Internet Users/100 Inhabitants; Broadband Internet Subscribers ('000); Broadband Internet Subscribers/100 Inhabitants;
Multimedia Markets - PCs ('000); PCs/100 Inhabitants; TV households ('000s); Pay-TV subscribers ('000s); Pay-TV subscribers/100 inhabitants; Cable TV subscribers ('000s); Direct-to-Home Subscribers ('000s)
BMI 5-Year Macroeconomic Forecast
BMI forecasts for all headline macroeconomic indicators, including real GDP growth, inflation, fiscal balance, trade balance, current account and external debt.

Competitive Landscape & Rankings
Commentary on key operators highlighting ownership structures, latest available revenue figures, market share analysis and ARPU counts.

Company Profiles & SWOTS
Company profiles, including SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analyses, fully researched senior executives and contact details, business activity, leading products and services, and a record of all recent foreign direct investments and projects.

The Sector At A Glance

Key Insights On The Telecomunications sector of Belgium

Signs that the Belgian fixed-line market may be moving back towards positive growth appear to have been dashed by an acceleration of losses at incumbent operator Belgacom. The operator lost 85,000 subscribers during the first half of the year, and while alternative and cable operators such as Telenet are still experiencing growth, we do not believe that this will be enough to offset the incumbent's losses. As a result, we have revised our fixed-line forecasts downwards, predicting a drop of around 1% during 2006 as a whole. This would take penetration down to 43.7%. However, the outlook is more positive in the broadband sector, where strong competition between triple-play operators Belgacom and Telenet is helping to drive take-up. We forecast that penetration rates will exceed 20% by the end of 2006, which puts Belgium among Europe's most developed broadband markets.

In the mobile sector, growth accelerated slightly during the second quarter of the year, although gains in the small Belgian market are relatively modest compared with other West European markets. Growth in Q2 came entirely from the two smaller operators, Mobistar and BASE, with market leader Proximus reporting a net loss of 7,000 subscribers. This is mainly due to the operator's reluctance to get drawn into a price war in the prepaid sector; as a result, Proximus is concentrating almost exclusively on adding new contract subscribers. However, BMI believes that this strategy could be slightly misguided. Not only is it having no appreciable effect on the operator's average revenue per user (ARPU) rates (which fell by 2.4% y-o-y), it could also be potentially depriving Proximus of future contract subscribers. This is the view taken at second-ranked Mobistar, which has focused its energies on upgrading existing prepaid customers to monthly post-paid plans. As a result, contract subscribers now account for 48% of its user base and its ARPU rates were up by nearly 6% on 2005.

Belgium finds itself once again at the bottom of BMI's Business Environment Rankings for Western Europe. Belgium loses points for its competitive and regulatory environment due to the continuing state control of Belgacom. Indeed, Belgacom's purchase of a 25% stake in Proximus from Vodafone, taking its holding to 100%, has increased the government's interest in the telecoms sector. While Belgium's relatively low penetration rates in the mobile and internet sectors do leave room for future growth, the small population means that absolute customer gains are likely to be limited.