Research and Markets: Jordan Telecommunications Report Q4 2010

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

In the latest update on the Jordan telecommunications market, we have provided data for the first half of 2010, following the publication of data by Orange, which is operated by France Telecom and Batelcos Umniah. Zain, meanwhile, only released data for the quarter ended March 2010, while Xpress does not provide any mobile subscriber figures.

While Orange remains the only operator with exclusivity rights to 3G due to expire in February 2011, there remains concern over LTE licensing. Jordan's telecoms regulator the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) revealed that it did not receive any application for the proposed auction of a 2.5GHz licence by the deadline of June 27 2010, reports Jordan Times. The TRC issued a document in May 2010 that included information on prices for the necessary frequencies, deadlines and other prerequisites for securing the 2.5GHz licence. The licence would have enabled winning operators to launch LTE services in the country. Contrary to this however, Zain stated that it had acquired a 15-year licence for US$70.4 million to establish and operate HSPA+ and LTE technology that is expected to be commercially launched in the first quarter of 2011.

Meanwhile, the Jordanian government is trying to stimulate growth in the internet and information and communications technology (ICT) services markets through tax incentives. A reduction in sales tax for both wireline and wireless broadband services will benefit business customer more than residential users, but could still help increase sales. Furthermore, and possibly more significantly, exported ICT services are being exempt from income tax, in a move that is aimed at encouraging the growth of this industry and promoting Jordan as an outsourcing destination.

No new data has been published for the broadband market leading us to retain our expectations in terms of forecasts, while Jordan Telecom had 499,000 fixed-lines in service as of H110, which was flat over the quarter. This indicates that the fixed-line market is stabilising, following a contraction of 3.5% in 2009, compared to 7% in 2008 and 9% in 2007. However, the fixed-line market could be further impacted negatively in 2010 and beyond with regard to the growing penetration of VoIP-based services across both wireline and wireless forms of broadband such as WiMAX.