Swedish telecoms giant Ericsson said yesterday there is still room for further strong growth in mobile phone penetration rates in Southeast Asia.
The company, which included Bangladesh as part of Southeast Asia, said two-thirds of the region's population still did not own a mobile device of any kind which means there was pent-up demand for such services.
"In Southeast Asia, including Bangladesh, we are seeing the mobile penetration increasingly growing, especially in the low ARPU market at 5.5 million subscribers," said Jan Signell, president for Southeast Asia.
An estimated 66 percent of people in the region are not connected by mobile, he said at a media briefing held at the sidelines of CommunicAsia in Singapore.
ARPU refers to the average revenue per user and it is a widely used term in the telecom industry to measure how successful an operator is in maximizing the earnings potential from its subscriber base.
According to Signell, the bulk of the mobile growth in Southeast Asia will come from the lower income segment where the ARPU is US$5 or lower.
"Ericsson believes that future revenue and subscriber growth will be from this segment of population," he said.
Vietnam and Bangladesh are growing exceptionally well, Signell said.
"It's really really high growth going in Vietnam," he said, displaying computer slides that show the country has just a mobile penetration rate of 21 percent out of a population of above 85 million.
"It's pent-up demand in Vietnam that is large," he said.
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