Research and Markets: Venezuela Telecommunications Report Q4 2010

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/528528/venezuela_telecomm) has announced the addition of the "Venezuela Telecommunications Report Q4 2010" report to their offering.

Business Monitor International's Venezuela Telecommunications Report provides industry professionals and strategists, corporate analysts, telecommunication associations, government departments and regulatory bodies with independent forecasts and competitive intelligence on Venezuela's telecommunications industry.

BMI's latest quarterly update on Venezuela's telecommunications market sees significant changes to our five-year forecast for the growth of the country's mobile subscriber base. The latest data from Venezuelan telecoms regulator Codatel suggests that both the number of registered and active mobile customers shrank in Q110. The countrys second largest operator Movistar, which is owned by Spain's Telefnica, reported a significant drop in customer numbers in the first quarter, owing to the deduction of inactive prepaid users from the operators reported total. State-owned Movilnet also saw a shrinking customer base in the first quarter. As a result of inactive customer deductions, Venezuela's mobile market penetration rate fell to 102.9% in March, from 104.5% in the previous quarter, according to the regulators data. Furthermore, even when only active mobile subscriptions are counted, the penetration rate appears to have fallen in the first quarter of the year, dropping 0.8 percentage points to reach 98.4%. This development suggests that a larger number of mobile users fell into the inactive category as defined by the regulator.

We believe that recent trends in Venezuela's mobile market point to increasing saturation and the likelihood of limited future growth. Our newly revised forecast for the mobile sector envisages market penetration reaching 99.5% at the end of 2014. Between 2010 and 2014, we predict that the market will grow at an annual average rate of around 2.3%. Although further growth will be supported by Venezuela's expanding population, we do not expect the penetration rate, based on active users, to cross the 100% mark.

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