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 Nigeria

Growth in Nigeria's mobile phone market slowed down during the first half of 2007, with quarterly net additions averaging 1.47mn, compared with 2.7mn in 2006. BMI believes that this was in large part caused by continued losses at M-Tel, the mobile unit of beleaguered fixed-line incumbent Nitel. According to local press reports, M-Tel's subscriber base had fallen to just 50,000 by the end of June, down from an estimated 700,000 at the end of 2006. Customers have left the operator in their droves, due to poor network quality, with several service outages experienced during the summer. The operator has pledged to invest in its network and raise its subscriber capacity, but BMI is sceptical as to whether MTel can regain the ground that it has lost to its larger rivals.

Results were far more positive at MTN and Celtel, which reported net additions of 1.755mn and 1.571mn respectively during the first half of the year. Both have taken advantage of M-Tel's woes to increase their market share and MTN has comfortably retained its market leadership, accounting for 43.6% of all mobile customers at the end of June 2007. However, we have nonetheless downgraded our market forecasts for year-end 2007 and beyond, as we believe that annual subscriber growth is now on a downward trend, even if volume growth in terms of net additions will continue to rise. We are forecasting a market total of just under 39.5mn by the end of 2007, which would take penetration to 29%. With teledensity still so low, Nigeria evidently has plenty of room for future growth, yet much will depend on improvements in network quality and whether services can be made affordable to those outside major urban areas.

Regarding the first point, we expect to see some improvements during the latter part of 2007 and into 2008. Following the award of 3G licences earlier this year, MTN, Globacom and Celtel have all begun rolling out new infrastructure, with Celtel alone expecting to spend around US$1.2bn on its network in 2007. While demand for 3G services is likely to remain muted in the short- to medium-term, the building of 3G networks will add much-needed subscriber capacity, which should result in improved network service quality. This is an issue that has dogged the industry in 2007 and by July, the national regulator (NCC) deemed it so bad that it banned all promotional activity by operators, which was thought to be exacerbating service failures by causing surges in demand.

However, the problem is partly out of the hands of operators, as many service quality issues stem from Nigeria's inadequate and unreliable power supply, although the government has made improving power capacity a priority. Nigeria's limited infrastructure, along with its poor record on corruption and threat of political instability, all pose challenges for companies operating there and have contributed to Nigeria's relatively low placing (11th) in our Africa Business Environment Ranking, despite its obvious telecoms growth potential.