2006 North Asian Convergence Market

This Asia market report covers the economies in the North Asia sub-region. It takes an overall look at the Convergence and Broadcasting markets. The markets covered include:

China has built a substantial nation-wide telecommunications infrastructure wit fibre optic cable networks covering the country. Pushed along by government policy to find cost-effective communication solutions, China has become the world's biggest user of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services.

Hong Kong Consistent with its status as one of the leading telecommunications economies in the world, Hong Kong has built itself world-class infrastructure. Digitalised since 1995, the Special Administrative Region (SAR) has been wired with almost 400,000km of optical fibre, with the vast majority of households covered by this extensive broadband network. Hong Kong is also a key regional telecommunications hub and as such is the landing point for a significant number of strategically important submarine cables.

Japan With its sophisticated infrastructure, Japan's telecommunications sector is one of the most active markets in the world. The development of local infrastructure in Japan has been dominated by the government's push to have incumbent NTT open up access to the 'last mile'. Although fixed-line services remain important, they have begun to decline.

North Korea Telecommunications in North Korea is seriously impeded by a combination of its generally poor economic state and the government's widespread repression of communication. The number of fixed-lines and the volume of voice traffic in North Korea are minuscule compared with South Korea. Because of its mountainous landscape and the high cost of building fixed-line networks, a mobile telephone network is considered a much more viable option. The country established a joint venture with a Thailand-based company to set up a mobile service in a special economic zone in north eastern North Korea. North Korea remains the only country in the world that had yet to adopt the Internet for public usage.

North Korea's obsession with secrecy has made it extremely difficult to get a clear picture of the country's telecom sector. [In the absence of official statistics, we have made estimates in our report.] The country looks like remaining isolated form the rest of the world for some years to come.

South Korea With its government adopting a very progressive approach to deregulation, liberalisation and privatisation of the local telecom industry, South Korea has become one of the world's major players in the market. The result has been willingness on the part of operators to invest in infrastructure and to be innovative, providing the basis for a booming telecommunications market.

Taiwan has adopted a long term approach to significantly upgrading its telecommunications infrastructure, undergoing a series of network modernisation projects in the last decade or so. Consistent with the performance of Taiwan's impressive mobile sector - one of the highest penetrated mobile markets in the world - the country has been energetically moving into the 'next generation' of mobile services. (After hitting a peak penetration of over 110%, the country had slipped back to about 93% in early 2005.) Taiwan awarded five licences for Third Generation (3G) services in early 2002 and, in so doing, was the first market in Asia to hold a 3G auction in which there were more bidders than licences.