UMTS Forum claims 16 million 3G subscribers globally
Total increases 60% in final quarter of 2004
The UMTS association has said that it is confident there are now at least 16 million UMTS subscribers globally, about a third of them in Europe.
The organisation, which is made up of operators, manufactures and other interested parties, reckons that as of midnight on 31 December, 2004, there wre 15.99 million registered 3G subscribers. This number has been put together by its own members, a spokesman said, collating data from a variety of sources.
The organisation is therefore confident that at the beginning of 2005, global subscriptions to 3G/UMTS networks had already reached 16 million on more than 60 networks. The 10 million customer milestone was passed in September 2004, meaning that around 40% of all 3g subscribers signed up in the last quarter of the year.
UMTS Forum Chairman Jean-Pierre Bienaimé said that Europe’s WCDMA subscriber base is rapidly catching up with the Asian market.
“Thanks mainly to the large number of commercial WCDMA network launches during the second half of last year, European 3G/UMTS customers now account for around one third of the global subscriber base.” he said.
Including handsets and data cards there are also over 100 WCDMA devices available, the Forum reckoned.
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