GSM Technologies on Track to Break Half a Billion Subscriptions in the Americas by End of 2008

Bellevue, WA, May 21, 2008 - 3G Americas, a wireless industry trade association representing the GSM family of technologies including LTE, has announced total market share for the GSM family equal to 66% of the entire cellular market in the Western Hemisphere.

This represents a 9% percent increase in market share since the first quarter of 2007, according to Informa Telecoms and Media’s World Cellular Information Service. With nearly 450 million subscriptions at the end of the first quarter of 2008, Informa forecasts that GSM and UMTS/HSPA are on track to break 500 million subscriptions in the Western Hemisphere by the end of this year with a 70% share of market.

GSM and UMTS/HSPA technologies grew subscriptions by 35% annually as of the first quarter of this year in the Americas adding 117 million new connections. On a global basis, GSM and UMTS/HSPA added 673 million subscriptions in the year ending March 2008 which represents 88% global share of market and annual growth of 28% according to Informa. There are 3.5 billion wireless cellular connections worldwide today, of which nearly 3.1 billion are GSM/HSPA connections.

Chris Pearson, President of 3G Americas stated, “The tremendous benefits offered by the GSM evolution to HSPA are being realized today by the operators, and by their customers as data revenues continue to rise with more applications and services being used.”

Informa reports 209 million UMTS/HSPA subscriptions as of March 2008, already 6% of the global wireless market. This will exceed 300 million by the end of 2008 according to the analyst firm’s forecasts, and one billion in the year 2011.

Latin America and the Caribbean is showing significant growth as GSM and UMTS/HSPA achieved 83% share of market, up from a 72% share a year prior in March 2007. The GSM family added more than 100 million subscriptions annually as of March 2008, with the total subscriber base for GSM/HSDPA of 334 million, well over the size of the entire population of the United States. CDMA lost 10 million subscriptions in Latin America and the Caribbean over the twelve months ending March 2008 and has 51 million total subscriptions or 12.7% share of market. TDMA also continued to lose subscriptions over the twelve months ending March 2008, down by 16 million to a remaining customer base of 10.7 million or 2.7% share of market.

“We continue to see many operators in Latin America and the Caribbean upgrading their networks to 3G services with UMTS/HSDPA,” stated Erasmo Rojas, Director of Latin America and the Caribbean for 3G Americas. “We are very pleased that in less than two years since the first HSDPA commercial network launch in the region, there are today already more than one million subscriptions for UMTS/HSDPA, and operators are experiencing an increase in their data revenues as a result.”

There are 25 operators in 14 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean with commercial UMTS/HSPA networks today. On a global basis, 198 of the 225 commercial UMTS networks in 95 countries already offer HSDPA mobile broadband.

Source: 3G Americas